Youth justice workers, lawyers and rights activists all called for the police practice of carding to stop or be altered dramatically at a special public meeting held at city hall Monday night.
Joy Bullen, a mother, said she feared for her son each time a police car slowed down in her family's middle-class Toronto neighbourhood.
Bullen asked the board to exercise its legal right and responsibilities to protect the public by ruling the practice cease immediately.
Close to 100 people packed Committee Room 1 at city hall to review 31 recommendations to improve the practice contained in an internal police report called the Police and Community Engagement Review, as well as to discuss a report on carding and profiling by police board chair Alok Mukherjee.
"The only remedy is to stop this practice," well-known civil-rights lawyer Peter Rosenthal told board members. "The whole matter of street checks is filled with problems and results in increased alienation," he said.
A series of Star investigations has shown the practice disproportionately affects black and brown people in the city. Mukherjee has said racial profiling is inexcusable, whether the impact is intentional or not.
The meeting was held to get public input into the board's first policy on carding, but Councillor Michael Thompson, the board's vice chair, said he was unsure he could support creating a policy that legitimized a practice that unfairly targets young black men.
"I think we actually have a major problem here," said Thompson.
Councillor Michael Del Grande also came out strongly against carding, saying it would be difficult supporting a policy for a practice that violates the Charter, if that's the case.
"I think we're on thin ice," said Del Grande.
The "gross over-representation" of African-Canadians in the police carding database suggests that racial profiling is occurring, said Dianne Carter of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, who called for the practice to be stopped.
Carter said carding procedures must be assessed against the Human Rights Code and the Charter in order to provide effective police training and the recommendations contained in PACER do not do that.
Lawyers with the Law Union of Ontario, who have previously called for an end to carding, told board members last night that the practice violates the equality section of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as well as the Ontario Human Rights Code and should be halted.
Rosenthal, who is representing Micheal Eligon's family at a coroner's inquest into police shooting, agrees with that legal opinion and went further, stating that in his view, carding also violates section 7 of the Charter which guarantees liberty.
"Our position remains the same today as it was two years ago," Howard Morton of the Law Union of Ontario, who said officers should be advising people what their rights are when they're stopped.
The service's PACER report acknowledges that one in three cards filled out by its officers cites "general investigation," a reason that has been criticized by rights advocates for being too vague. The police report also notes that only one in 10 cards is the result of intelligence-led policing, which is the reason the force says it cards in certain violent areas of the city.
Police filled out nearly 400,000 cards in 2012, an increase of 62 per cent since 2005, according to a Star investigation that also found the number of black youth (ages 15 to 24) that had been carded over a five-year period was more than equal to the number of black youth who lived in the city.
The PACER recommendations will be phased in over three years and include doubling the time officers spend in community response units, diversity training and early intervention for officers who show bias, more legal training, and public reports showing a breakdown of contact cards by race and demographics.
Direct the chief to develop "bona fide criteria" for carding, also called street checks, and deal with individual officers who deviate from the criteria.
That personal details collected during street checks be retained, in most circumstances, for no longer than five years, instead of the seven recommended in the PACER report.
That the service stop using street checks as a performance measure.
That the chief report to the board with breakdown of demographic and race-based statistics three times a year.
Purging the card database of any contact without "bona fide investigative justification" within six months of approval of the policy by the board.
Review the Toronto Anti-Violence Strategy to ensure it complies with the Ontario Human Rights Code, the board's race and ethnocultural equity policy as well as the Police Service Act.
Earlier Monday, the Black Action Defense Committee (BADC) held a press conference at its St. Clair Ave. W. office to discuss a proposed racial profiling class action lawsuit served last week on police and the board.
The committee is seeking individuals to come forward to become representative plaintiffs in the case, which at this point has only the committee named as a plaintiff. It would not succeed if that remained the case, say several lawyers who spoke to the Star.
Police, said BADC board member Valerie Steele, have been over policing the black communities. She said that the practice of carding is the epitome of racial profiling and reminiscent of "pass laws" in place under Apartheid in South Africa, which controlled movement of blacks.
Steele said over policing has eroded trust.
"When you see their behaviours when dealing with our community, you cannot help but dislike them, even though we know that there are decent ones. The way they swarm our community for the simplest reason points out that there are either too many of them employed with not much to do or they are simply racist.