Community activists are applauding the Ontario government for proposing strict new curbs on carding. Police, to no one's surprise, are not. Some police chiefs and police unions say they are worried the curbs will hamper their ability to interact with the public and control crime.
Police, of course, tend to resist any check on their authority. It would be easy to dismiss their complaints as nothing more than reflex. In this case, they deserve a hearing. Police argue that when they conduct street checks – questioning and documenting people they encounter on the beat but are not under arrest – they often learn things that help them prevent or solve crimes.
Consider the case of Christopher Skinner. The 27-year-old was walking along the street in downtown Toronto in the early morning of Oct. 18, 2009, after celebrating his younger sister's birthday at a bar. He is said to have asked occupants of a passing SUV for a ride, and that when they refused, he hit the car. The men inside jumped out and beat him to the ground. The car drove over him as it left the scene, leaving him dying on the pavement.
No one in the car came forward to admit responsibility despite repeated pleas from police and the Skinner family. Then police caught a break. An ex-girlfriend of one of the men in the car gave police his name. It would have been hard to make a case with only that, but when police put the name into a database, up popped the names of some of his associates from a street check years earlier.
Stacy Gallant, the detective on the case, says that put police on the path to solving the crime. They obtained phone and banking records. They established who was in the car that night: four men and two women. They identified the SUV, a black Ford Explorer. They got authority to conduct wiretaps. One of the women and one of the men gave police full statements about what happened. The conspiracy of silence crumbled.
Agustin Caruso, the driver of the SUV, pleaded guilty to manslaughter last month and was sentenced to eight and half years in jail. After the sentencing, Det.-Sgt. Gallant told reporters the information recorded in that long-ago street check was a key to putting together the puzzle of the Skinner case. He told me in an interview that the carding information was invaluable, helping police identify and connect the individuals in the car.
One result, obviously, does not make the case for carding, but it does give pause. Critics of carding say it often amounts to racial profiling. Young black men complained they were being stopped repeatedly for no reason. As a result, Community Safety Minister Yasir Naqvi is prohibiting "random and arbitrary collection of identifying information by police." He also wants to require police to tell people why they are being questioned, tell them that they have the right to walk away and how to file a complaint.
Det.-Sgt. Gallant thinks all of this could make police on the beat reluctant to do a crucial part of their job: find out what is happening in their community. "Are we tying the hands of officers by saying, 'You can't even stop to talk to people?' Well, that's wrong," he said.
This is more than the sound of police power pushing back against an attempt to take away one its clubs. This is the concern of the ordinary cop. Officers such as Det.-Sgt. Gallant are worried about how they will perform their duties effectively under the new regime.
Mr. Naqvi says he listened to community voices when he decided to crack down on carding. It is not clear he listened hard enough to those who are in charge of keeping communities safe.
We do not want any group to feel picked on by police, starting a damaging cycle of alienation. But we do not want police to retreat into their cars and their offices for fear of becoming the target of complaints, either.
Any measure like this must balance community safety against civil liberties. Before setting the new regulations in stone, let's make sure the balance is right.
Marcus Gee