Cops want more body scanners
Critics say Toronto force should instead address its high rate of searches
Critics say real issue is the ‘alarming rate’ of strip searches,
As the force continues to face criticism for conducting “far too many strip searches,” a new Toronto police report has endorsed a long-term plan to install $250,000-per-unit body scanners across the service, saying the X-ray technology commonly used in jails will increase “dignity and respect” of anyone facing an intrusive search.
In a report filed in advance of Thursday’s Toronto police board meeting, Chief Mark Saunders says a recent sixmonth pilot project testing the scanners at a downtown police division was a success, both for police and those being scanned.
The full-body scans — which detect metal, plastic and other items outside or hidden inside a body — were used as an alternative to a strip search, in which a person must undress to be inspected by an officer. The pilot project, which ended in April, found the vast majority of people being scanned preferred that method to a physical strip search.
But critics question why police want to invest in new technology — which cost at least $250,000 per unit, plus maintenance, training and possible facility renovation fees — rather than address why officers are strip-searching so many people to begin with.
According to a scathing report released in March by the province’s police watchdog, the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD), Toronto police conducted strip searches in 40 per cent of arrests between 2014 and 2016, a rate 40 times higher than in comparable services in Ottawa and Hamilton. A landmark 2001 Supreme
Court ruling established that strip searches are “inherently humiliating and degrading” and should only be done when there are reasonable grounds, not as a matter of course.
“Why is our police force so unwilling to change its behaviour? Does it really think its role is to humiliate and demean as many of those it arrests as possible?” asked John Sewell, with the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition, in a letter to the board this week.
Sewell urged the board to halt a planned second phase of pilot project, funded by the province, “and either return the money to the provincial government, or use that money for more useful public projects.”
Michael Bryant, executive director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, called the technology a “distraction” from the Toronto police’s “alarming rate” of strip searching — “and the police board should not fall for it.”
“The technology itself is just invasive in a different way, because it renders the person disrobed electronically as opposed to physically, which may be an improvement in degree but not in kind,” Bryant said in an interview Wednesday.
The force’s “obsession” with strip-searching “would be bizarre if it weren’t so harmful to people,” he added, saying the service has not provided a reason why it searches people it arrests at such a high rate. Meaghan Gray, a spokesperson for the Toronto police, said in an email that the fullbody scan pilot project has prompted the service to review its procedure on strip searches. The service has also delivered training and internal guidance on when a strip search is warranted.
“This may or may not translate into a change in numbers but it’s provided us the opportunity to reinforce our processes with our members,” she said.
Gray has previously told the Star that when done appropriately strip searches can be “a necessary safety requirement that results in the seizure of weapons and drugs which pose a significant risk to the person and those around them.”
According to Saunders’ letter, the project at downtown’s 14 division will continue for another three years, thanks to $497,000 in funding from the Ministry of the Solicitor General’s Community Safety and Policing Grant. The force is now in the middle of a procurement process for a new vendor; his letter to the board does not provide a start date for the second phase.
Saunders’ report doesn’t ask for funding, though it acknowledges that future purchases would come from the force’s capital and operating budget.
There is no imminent plan to implement the scanners elsewhere. But the Toronto police full-body scanner project team recommends that, long term, the technology be installed “at each central lock-up facility within the service.”
The report states that could be as many as 10 potential sites, though Gray said the service is “not committing to a number because we don’t know what ‘service wide’ will look like a year from now.”