Tying crime surge to new carding rules 'preposterous,' critics charge

Critics of the police practice known as carding don't believe the recent surge in violent crime in Ottawa is linked to new rules restricting how police conduct street checks.

Carding, known in some jurisdictions as "community contact policing," is when officers stop, question and demand identification documents from members of the public, even when they're not suspected of any specific crime.

For the police to say that they're somehow hamstrung by these regulations is, in my mind, preposterous.- Leo Russomanno, criminal lawyer

Ontario introduced new regulations last year banning the practice in specific situations. 

Earlier this week, Ottawa police association president Matt Skoff drew a direct link between the decrease in police interaction with the public that resulted from the changes, and the recent spike in violent crime in the city.

"It's utterly without foundation," said criminal lawyer Leo Russomanno. 

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"It's very dangerous to make that suggestion. The fact is, there are exceptions in those regulations that are very wide, and they allow the police to perform certain checks when they're investigating a particular offence," Russomanno said.

"So for the police to say that they're somehow hamstrung by these regulations is, in my mind, preposterous."

Skof was responding to a report to the Ottawa Police Services Board on regulated police interactions that showed a dramatic decrease from thousands of checks in recent years to just seven in 2017. Skof claimed there was a "correlation" between "a lack of interacting with the public and an increase — a sharp, dramatic increase — in the number of shootings."

No data to back up claim: critic

Toronto journalist and activist Desmond Cole doesn't believe that. He said Skof has been misrepresenting the regulations "say since they were drafted."

Cole has been a vocal opponent of police carding for years, even going as far as shutting down a Toronto police board meeting to demand a complete end to the practice.

In 2015 he wrote an award-winning article for Toronto Life documenting his own personal experience with police street checks, which he said he'd experienced more than 50 times.

"[Skof] has capitalized on the fact that there's poor public information about this, that there is fear among some quarters of the public," Cole said.​ "If there are 40 murders in a city one year and 60 the next, can you attribute that really to one factor? Do they have data to back that up? No."

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Building trust

Cole believes if police want to solicit the help of community members in solving crimes, they're going to have to abandon the practice of carding altogether and build trust instead.

"Why would people, who are being profiled by the police in Ottawa, trust the police with information about a crime? If they feel like they've been victimized but they also feel victimized by the police, why would they go to the police?" asks Cole. "It doesn't make logical sense for them to do it."

Research conducted by York University between 2013 and 2015 found that Middle Eastern and black drivers, particularly young men, were far more likely to be stopped by Ottawa police than other drivers.

"The data speaks for itself about what the impact of these street checks have been on racialized communities," said Russomanno. 

"I would submit the regulations don't go far enough to actually protecting the groups that have clearly been harmed by the street checks or carding practices of the police."