Jim Rankin Staff Reporter
Seven years have passed since a Toronto Star investigation into race, policing and crime in Canada’s largest city was met with denials of racial bias. Today, police across the country readily acknowledge bias is a factor in police decision-making, and the Toronto Police Service is setting an example for other services and institutions with its diversity policy. Yet race still matters. Today, using never-before-released data, the Star launches a series highlighting the Toronto police practice of documenting people in mostly non-criminal encounters. In an uneasy trade-off for safer streets, people — both “good” and “bad” — end up in a growing internal database, and it is young black men, more than any other group, who are most likely to be stopped and documented.
Black people across Toronto are three times more likely to be stopped and documented by police than white people, a Star investigation has found.
To a lesser extent, the same is true for people described by police as having “brown” skin, according to a Star analysis of 1.7 million contact cards filled out by Toronto police officers between 2003 and 2008.
Top brass, including Chief Bill Blair, stress that they are deploying officers in areas of high “victimization” where there is lack of opportunity and people are struggling with poverty, and where there also happen to be significant ethnic populations. They say being carded does not mean you have a criminal record.
Read full article here: http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/760665–race-matters
Watch Video, Profiling – or practical policing?: http://www.thestar.com/videozone/760029
Tags: News
