Toronto police board votes in favour of draft carding policy
Posted April 16, 2015 6:58 pm.
Last Updated April 16, 2015 9:38 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The Toronto police services board has voted in favour of the latest draft carding policy.
Carding is the act of recording the information received during community engagements. Community engagements are non-detention, non-arrest interactions between police officers and community members that involve the eliciting and/or recording of personal information.
Carding allowing officers to routinely stop people in the streets and collect information about them.
The four major changes made in the draft policy today are:
1. If asked, officers are required to communicate the reason for the interaction. Also if asked, the officer must provide the person being carded an explanation of their rights and obligations and to uphold the right of the person to walk away when there’s no grounds for an arrest. This is still not mandatory at every interaction.
2. It will now be required for all officers to provide their service business card with the officer’s contact information after every interaction. In a previous draft of the policy, the officer would only offer a business card if asked for one.
3. Data is collected during an interaction and will be retained for one year and then sequestered from the service’s database. One year later, if that data has not been accessed or used as part of an investigation, it will be purged from the system altogether.
4. An independent body will review the policy in six months.
Carding has been called a discriminatory practice that unfairly targeted visible minorities. The practice has been heavily criticized for targeting black males in the Jane Street and Finch Avenue West area.
Chief Bill Blair’s last day on the job is April 25, and his successor hasn’t yet been announced.
