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In a freedom of information request that spanned nearly seven years, the Star obtained six years worth of contact-card data from Toronto police.
10 … 9 … 8 …
Rohan Robinson begins the mental countdown. A police cruiser has pulled up beside his Acura, an officer has peeked in the driver’s side window, and the cruiser has dropped back in behind his car...
7 … 6 … 5 …
Usually, he sees the flashing lights in the rear-view mirror before he reaches zero. “It’s so routine now that I know,” says Robinson, 32, an elementary school teacher with the Toronto District School Board.
Robinson, who is black, estimates that since 2001, he has been stopped close to 30 times while driving in Toronto without being ticketed. On a few other occasions he was handed tickets, and he says he deserved them.
Before he was old enough to drive, beginning when he was 15, he would be stopped while on foot.
Toronto police question hundreds of thousands of people, both walking and driving, every year. In many cases, officers fill out a “208” card, police lingo for an index-card-sized document used as an investigative tool and, according to Chief Bill Blair, a way to “get to know” the neighbourhood.
Robinson does not know how many have been filled out on him.
In a freedom of information request that spanned nearly seven years, the Starobtained six years’ worth of contact-card data from Toronto police.How a Hydro One station dealt with the rainstorm
The Star analysis shows race, age and gender are big factors in who gets stopped. Looking at blacks and whites of all ages, blacks are three times more likely to be stopped.
Male blacks aged 15-24 are stopped and documented 2.5 times more than white males the same age.
In each of the city’s 74 police patrol zones, the Star analysis shows that blacks were documented at significantly higher rates than their overall census population by zone, and that in many zones, the same holds true for “brown” people — mainly people of South Asian, Arab and West Asian backgrounds.
“It doesn’t matter what type of neighbourhood you live in or what type of neighbourhood you’re travelling through, if you are black you are much more likely to attract the attention of the police and therefore have a contact card filled out,” says University of Toronto criminologist Scot Wortley, who reviewed the Star analysis.
In one of two interviews for this story, Blair said he understands that people may think they are being unfairly stopped. He said police are targeting neighbourhoods where the highest level of “victimization” occurs. He said these are often “racialized” neighbourhoods.
The collateral damage is law-abiding civilians who feel they are being treated unfairly because they are black. Although blacks make up 8.4 per cent of Toronto’s population, they account for three times as many contact cards.
Robinson, who wears his hair in short dreads, is troubled by this. And he’s far from alone. Max Rose, 16, who is regularly questioned by police in the Jane and Finch-area building he lives in, says he feels embarrassed when neighbour gather to watch.
Kasim St. Remy, 14, was recently stopped and questioned by police. He hadn’t done anything wrong. This bothers his mother, Clemee Joseph, yet she sees the stopping of young men of colour as necessary, if imperfect.
“It is hard for me when the police stop him to question him and have him on their radar but, as you know, in the past it has been all black young men killing each other,” says Joseph, 39. “I know that my son is a good kid, but sometimes his friends may not be.”
For Joseph, the other side of this issue is preserved under glass, in the framed pictures of her other son that crowd a living room table in her west end apartment. Last May, Jarvis St. Remy, 18, was killed in what she believes was a case of mistaken identity. St. Remy had no history with police, who have yet to make an arrest.
“I don’t like the stereotyping of this ... they get the good kids and the bad kids all in one,” she says. “But that is what is happening with the black kids, so that’s who they have to stop.”
Differences between black and white carding rates are highest in more affluent, mostly white areas of the city, such as North Toronto and the Kingsway, the Star found. Criminologist Wortley calls this the “out-of-place” phenomenon.
It’s a natural thing to expect from officers on the lookout of for things unusual or different, says Wortley, who oversaw a police stop data-collection pilot project by Kingston police.
Neither Blair nor Police Services Board chair Alok Mukherjee had a ready explanation for the city-wide pattern of disparity. Mukherjee said he would like to know more about whom police choose to document, and the reasons why. Blair suggests that every patrol zone has its “main street” where police are more active, and the demographics of people in those areas may account for this city-wide pattern.
The Star’s analysis of contact-card data found that most people police documented had not been charged criminally in the previous six years. Looking at 2008, four out of five who were carded did not show up in a criminal database also obtained by the Star.
There is a much smaller number of repeat offenders with serious criminal histories who are being checked up on with greater frequency.
Chief Blair estimates Toronto has 1,400 hard-core gang members and another, larger group of people suffering from mental health and addiction problems. Both end up receiving a disproportionate amount of intentional police attention. Two of Toronto’s most documented people in 2008 are female street prostitutes working in the downtown core. Another in the top 10 is a middle-aged panhandler from Newfoundland.
The cards pay off when police investigating serious crimes find links to associates, potential witnesses and suspects. The cards have also been used to obtain search warrants and are sometimes entered as evidence in criminal trials.
The Star found cases where convicted murderers had many 208 cards in their past, and some where they had none.
Colves “Jacko” Meggoe was a 50-year-old community activist who was gunned down in the foyer of his apartment building in 2006. At trial, one of the accused, 39-year-old Mark Cain, produced an alibi. Police used a 208 card to prove the man providing the alibi was not with Cain. Cain and his nephew were both recently convicted of the murder. Together, the two men had 33 208s. The man who offered the alibi had nine.
“That 208 tied everything together,” Homicide Det. John Biggerstaff says.
Mike McCormack, newly elected police union president, was working as a cop up until four months ago in 51 Division. He had spent 10 years in major crimes and gang intelligence. He calls the cards “invaluable.
“You’re recording data, setting up associations, knowing who’s involved (in gang activity). It puts people in certain locations.”
McCormack recalled a recent case in which two men were caught on video during a home invasion. Police knew the identity of one man but not the other. So they pulled the 208 card of the first man and looked up his associates. One of them had a criminal history, and thus there was a mugshot on file. “Lo and behold, it was the same guy as on the video.”
Senior officers with Toronto Police Service also provided an example of the cards working. They closed a sexual assault case at a York University residence in 2007 when, with one suspect in hand, they searched his 208 cards and found the accomplice. Both have been convicted.
The carding of citizens in non-criminal encounters is something most police services do. It has been beefed up in Toronto under Blair’s tenure as chief as part of the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS), introduced in 2006 in response to a spate of violence that led to 2005 becoming known as the Year of the Gun. The strategy involves a two-pronged approach: old-style community policing combined with a continued, heavy presence wherever and whenever required.
These officers are culled from units across the city and are often unfamiliar with the areas they flood.
LOTS MORE: http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/ra...high_rate.html
10 … 9 … 8 …
Rohan Robinson begins the mental countdown. A police cruiser has pulled up beside his Acura, an officer has peeked in the driver’s side window, and the cruiser has dropped back in behind his car...
7 … 6 … 5 …
Usually, he sees the flashing lights in the rear-view mirror before he reaches zero. “It’s so routine now that I know,” says Robinson, 32, an elementary school teacher with the Toronto District School Board.
Robinson, who is black, estimates that since 2001, he has been stopped close to 30 times while driving in Toronto without being ticketed. On a few other occasions he was handed tickets, and he says he deserved them.
Before he was old enough to drive, beginning when he was 15, he would be stopped while on foot.
Toronto police question hundreds of thousands of people, both walking and driving, every year. In many cases, officers fill out a “208” card, police lingo for an index-card-sized document used as an investigative tool and, according to Chief Bill Blair, a way to “get to know” the neighbourhood.
Robinson does not know how many have been filled out on him.
In a freedom of information request that spanned nearly seven years, the Starobtained six years’ worth of contact-card data from Toronto police.How a Hydro One station dealt with the rainstorm
Male blacks aged 15-24 are stopped and documented 2.5 times more than white males the same age.
In each of the city’s 74 police patrol zones, the Star analysis shows that blacks were documented at significantly higher rates than their overall census population by zone, and that in many zones, the same holds true for “brown” people — mainly people of South Asian, Arab and West Asian backgrounds.
“It doesn’t matter what type of neighbourhood you live in or what type of neighbourhood you’re travelling through, if you are black you are much more likely to attract the attention of the police and therefore have a contact card filled out,” says University of Toronto criminologist Scot Wortley, who reviewed the Star analysis.
In one of two interviews for this story, Blair said he understands that people may think they are being unfairly stopped. He said police are targeting neighbourhoods where the highest level of “victimization” occurs. He said these are often “racialized” neighbourhoods.
The collateral damage is law-abiding civilians who feel they are being treated unfairly because they are black. Although blacks make up 8.4 per cent of Toronto’s population, they account for three times as many contact cards.
Robinson, who wears his hair in short dreads, is troubled by this. And he’s far from alone. Max Rose, 16, who is regularly questioned by police in the Jane and Finch-area building he lives in, says he feels embarrassed when neighbour gather to watch.
Kasim St. Remy, 14, was recently stopped and questioned by police. He hadn’t done anything wrong. This bothers his mother, Clemee Joseph, yet she sees the stopping of young men of colour as necessary, if imperfect.
“It is hard for me when the police stop him to question him and have him on their radar but, as you know, in the past it has been all black young men killing each other,” says Joseph, 39. “I know that my son is a good kid, but sometimes his friends may not be.”
For Joseph, the other side of this issue is preserved under glass, in the framed pictures of her other son that crowd a living room table in her west end apartment. Last May, Jarvis St. Remy, 18, was killed in what she believes was a case of mistaken identity. St. Remy had no history with police, who have yet to make an arrest.
“I don’t like the stereotyping of this ... they get the good kids and the bad kids all in one,” she says. “But that is what is happening with the black kids, so that’s who they have to stop.”
Differences between black and white carding rates are highest in more affluent, mostly white areas of the city, such as North Toronto and the Kingsway, the Star found. Criminologist Wortley calls this the “out-of-place” phenomenon.
It’s a natural thing to expect from officers on the lookout of for things unusual or different, says Wortley, who oversaw a police stop data-collection pilot project by Kingston police.
Neither Blair nor Police Services Board chair Alok Mukherjee had a ready explanation for the city-wide pattern of disparity. Mukherjee said he would like to know more about whom police choose to document, and the reasons why. Blair suggests that every patrol zone has its “main street” where police are more active, and the demographics of people in those areas may account for this city-wide pattern.
The Star’s analysis of contact-card data found that most people police documented had not been charged criminally in the previous six years. Looking at 2008, four out of five who were carded did not show up in a criminal database also obtained by the Star.
There is a much smaller number of repeat offenders with serious criminal histories who are being checked up on with greater frequency.
Chief Blair estimates Toronto has 1,400 hard-core gang members and another, larger group of people suffering from mental health and addiction problems. Both end up receiving a disproportionate amount of intentional police attention. Two of Toronto’s most documented people in 2008 are female street prostitutes working in the downtown core. Another in the top 10 is a middle-aged panhandler from Newfoundland.
The cards pay off when police investigating serious crimes find links to associates, potential witnesses and suspects. The cards have also been used to obtain search warrants and are sometimes entered as evidence in criminal trials.
The Star found cases where convicted murderers had many 208 cards in their past, and some where they had none.
Colves “Jacko” Meggoe was a 50-year-old community activist who was gunned down in the foyer of his apartment building in 2006. At trial, one of the accused, 39-year-old Mark Cain, produced an alibi. Police used a 208 card to prove the man providing the alibi was not with Cain. Cain and his nephew were both recently convicted of the murder. Together, the two men had 33 208s. The man who offered the alibi had nine.
“That 208 tied everything together,” Homicide Det. John Biggerstaff says.
Mike McCormack, newly elected police union president, was working as a cop up until four months ago in 51 Division. He had spent 10 years in major crimes and gang intelligence. He calls the cards “invaluable.
“You’re recording data, setting up associations, knowing who’s involved (in gang activity). It puts people in certain locations.”
McCormack recalled a recent case in which two men were caught on video during a home invasion. Police knew the identity of one man but not the other. So they pulled the 208 card of the first man and looked up his associates. One of them had a criminal history, and thus there was a mugshot on file. “Lo and behold, it was the same guy as on the video.”
Senior officers with Toronto Police Service also provided an example of the cards working. They closed a sexual assault case at a York University residence in 2007 when, with one suspect in hand, they searched his 208 cards and found the accomplice. Both have been convicted.
The carding of citizens in non-criminal encounters is something most police services do. It has been beefed up in Toronto under Blair’s tenure as chief as part of the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS), introduced in 2006 in response to a spate of violence that led to 2005 becoming known as the Year of the Gun. The strategy involves a two-pronged approach: old-style community policing combined with a continued, heavy presence wherever and whenever required.
These officers are culled from units across the city and are often unfamiliar with the areas they flood.
LOTS MORE: http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/ra...high_rate.html
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