John Tory calls for full stop to carding, citing ‘eroded public trust’
Toronto’s mayor says his change of heart about an “agonizing” issue followed many discussions with the black community.

thestar.com
June 7, 2015
By Jennifer Pagliaro, Patty Winsa, Jim Rankin and David Rider

Mayor John Tory, in his city hall office, tells the Toronto Star about his change of heart on carding.

Mayor John Tory is calling for a “permanent cancellation” of carding after realizing the police board’s recent “incremental” reforms to the controversial practice didn’t go far enough to alleviate its “toxic” impact.

“I will now say that while I thought that the new policy was a step forward in terms of where we really were, which was with this policy in place but no procedure - I think in terms of the reaction that’s taken place in the community at large, people didn’t see it that way,” said Tory in an interview with the Star in his City Hall office prior to Sunday’s announcement.

Tory was referring to the “community engagement” policy passed by the Toronto police board in April - a much watered-down version of the board’s original policy passed a year ago.

The policy said police should inform citizens of their rights with regard to being carded - if asked - and that officers were to issue a business-card receipt to anyone whose information was taken. But the tight restrictions in the original policy, particularly on when citizens could be stopped and asked to provide personal information, had been lost.

“The issue of community engagements, or carding as it has become known, has eroded public trust to a level that is clearly unacceptable,” Tory said in a speech Sunday. “As mayor, it is up to me to do whatever I can do to restore that trust.”

But while the mayor will bring a motion to halt the practice at the June 18 meeting of the board, it doesn’t mean carding will be abolished.

Tory wants to start with a “clean slate” and create a policy that addresses purging the database, advise citizens proactively that the interaction is voluntary, provide some type of receipt and eliminate random stops - which have filled a police database with the names and information of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

“We have to go right back to the beginning,” said Tory, adding the board needs a “fresh” start to develop rules that will earn the “confidence of the public.”

The decision by Tory came at the end of a tough week where a group of his peers, former mayors, politicians and activists took the mayor by surprise with a plan to publicly issue a statement - just steps from his office door - that called for a halt to the “corrosive” practice.

Tory found out about the petition only a day before and asked three leaders of the concerned citizens group to meet with him.

That was followed by an opinion piece published in the Toronto Star by police board chair Alok Mukherjee, who stated that documenting innocent civilians was wrong and should end.

The turning point came Friday, when Tory was leaving Edmonton after attending the annual Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference in Edmonton.

There, Tory got advice from other big-city mayors - including Edmonton’s Don Iveson, Calgary’s Naheed Nenshi, Vancouver’s Gregor Robertson and Ottawa’s Jim Watson - on how to move forward. Tory said the take-away was to follow his conscience.

In the cab ride to Edmonton’s airport en route to a business meeting in San Francisco, Tory turned to chief of staff Chris Eby and told him about his change of heart.

The two wrote the first draft of the speech the mayor delivered Sunday afternoon. In it, Tory said this issue “has been among the most personally agonizing for me during my short tenure as mayor...The personal stories I’ve heard in recent months and even before, the words, laden with deeply felt emotion, have been building up in my conscience and they have stuck with me.”

Councillors who have been speaking out on carding immediately praised Tory for his leadership Sunday.

“It does show leadership. He didn’t have that position 10 days ago, and he’s been moved by outspoken Torontonians who are committed to a better city and committed to ending carding,” said veteran Councillor Paula Fletcher at city hall. “I appreciate it when the mayor rises above, I’ll say, his advisors and becomes the mayor of the whole city.”

Police board member Councillor Shelley Carroll, reached by phone in Edmonton, said she believes the board will back Tory's move.

“I’m very glad that he has come to the same conclusion that I had indicated a few days ago,” said Mukherjee, referring to the Star opinion piece. “This is the right thing for the board to do: To put a ban on carding and go from there.”

Any new policy will still have to be put into effect by Chief Mark Saunders, who has defended carding and denounced the Star’s statistical investigations into the practice in an internal report.

A statement by the Toronto Police Association said it was “extremely concerned by today’s decision,” warning that it “may impact public safety.”

“Carding is a proven, pro-active police investigative strategy that reduces, prevents and solves crime,” the union’s statement said, without clarifying any statistical link. It went on to say that police need “clear and articulate direction from the TPSB in regards to how our members are expected to proactively gather intelligence information while engaging with the community.”

Carding was suspended by former police chief Bill Blair in January and work has been underway to write procedures for the most recent watered-down policy, a route chosen because it was the only way to get the former chief to agree to write procedures to implement it.

Saunders has been continuing work to finalize those procedures, but there is no guarantee they will include many of the elements sought by Tory on Sunday.

A community advisory committee of residents and police, formed after an internal review of carding by the force, called PACER, is still fighting to get the rights-based language from the April 2014 board policy included in the new procedures, but it is Saunders who has final say.

“While these consultations are important, it is his procedure to finalize and, like all other procedures, it does not require approval from anyone else,” said police spokesperson Meaghan Gray in an email earlier this month. On Sunday, spokesperson Mark Pugash said they would not comment on board decisions.

Audrey Campbell, who is the civilian co-chair of the PACER committee, called Tory’s announcement a good “first step.”

“The mayor said his intent is to eliminate carding. And it will be on the agenda for the June board meeting,” said Campbell. “Policy has to be set. It is a milestone. This is a great announcement. Now we have to look at what this will look like.”

The mayor also believes that three legal opinions on carding, which Blair solicited and paid for with taxpayers’ money, should be made public. Although other board members have seen them after signing confidentiality agreements, the mayor has not.

Several Star investigations have shown that carding - the practice of stopping and documenting citizens in mostly non-criminal encounters - has disproportionately affected people who are black, and to a lesser extent people with brown skin.

In July 2013, when the board brought in a motion that officers issue receipts to people who are carded, the number of such contacts dropped by 75 per cent compared with the same period a year earlier, and stayed low in the following months.

But a Star investigation showed that after the drop in carding, the proportion of contact cards issued to people with black skin rose to 27.4 per cent. That is 3.4 times the proportion of Toronto’s black population, which stands at 8.1 per cent, according to the latest census figures.

Tory said candidly Sunday that he mistakenly thought the board’s latest policy would be a “step forward” and the reaction from the community at large would be more positive.

“I don’t believe that that was happening. I think if anything it was going the other way.”

That ongoing opposition, made stronger by a devastating personal account in Toronto Life about interactions with police by journalist Desmond Cole - whom Tory mentioned by name Sunday - proved a turning point not just for the mayor, but for the city.