The controversial practice of police carding individuals and carrying out random street checks was said to have stopped with new provincial legislation. However, those original challenges may have morphed into something far more dangerous because Ontario’s institution of policing lacks standardization. Just how bad can it be? Well, how does hearing multiple policing stakeholders confirm, “Not all internal policies are drafted. Grandfathered policies may be verbal”.
Just like how there were no avenues to challenge information related to carding or street checks, today’s general occurrence reports fall in the same category. No policing agency in Ontario, not municipal nor provincial, has an officially drafted set of policies on individuals being able to dispute and challenge the contents of a general occurrence reports. Carding, the one-sided narrative tool that resulted in permanent information being stored in police databases without any recourse to challenge the information was eventually banned, but it seems to have blended itself in with general occurrence reports.
Simply put, the real systemic failing as it relates to Ontario’s Institution of Policing is the absence of any process to appeal police narratives and to challenge and dispute the occurrence of events that an officer has reported to have transpired. If it can be proven that a general occurrence report is inconsistent with the actual occurrence of events, with the onus of responsibility falling on the subject of the report, then that needs to be challengeable. If it is determined that a general occurrence report happens to be a baseless police report, then it needs to be reworked, maybe even removed. But that is not how policing works in Ontario.
There are only two ways to raise an issue with a general occurrence report. The first involves either escalating the issue with a staff sergeant, and likely having to go up the chain of command as supervisors are unlikely to budge, before arriving at the Deputy Police Chief and Chief of Police. The second involves connecting with the Ontario Independent Police Review Directorate (OIPRD) and filing a formal complaint but having to get the OIPRD involved in order to resolve issues related to the consistency of police reports might be the biggest waste of resources for an organization that is already stretched thin.
The OIPRD employs around 60 workers across different roles and receive close to 6,000 complaints a year or close to 100 complaints for every employee. The OIPRD is stretched thin as it is, and complaints related to the consistency of police reports is a total waste of resources. But it seems to be unavoidable given the toxic reputation that much policing has when it comes to embracing cover-up culture and how there are limited provincial requirements for appealing police narrative. The power of creating enough narratives is that it can create the appearance of something, even when there is nothing.
To understand the full ramifications of narratives, it is important to look back at the history of carding to remind ourselves of the history of this banned practice.
History is not kind towards the police practice of carding and random street checks.
In 2017, the Ontario government passed legislation that was meant to put an end to carding and random street checks, which was meant to protect the civil liberties of people who were not under investigation and the arbitrary weaponization of policing powers. The new rules prevented officers from asking for identifying information or identifying documents when looking into suspicious activities, gathering intelligence, and investigating possible criminal activity. However, the rules did allow officers to collect such information when there were reasonable grounds to investigate a specific offence when doing things like conducting a traffic stop, arresting, or detaining a person, executing a warrant, and investigating specific crimes.
Long before the 2017 changes came into effect, many Indigenous and racialized groups had been complaining about how some police officers would target individuals, giving the appearance that the interaction was random when it was targeted, and how those interactions left members of those groups feeling disenfranchised. One explanation of the impact of carding can be found in the Ontario Human Rights Commissions inquiry report titled, “From Impact to Action”, breaks down how the discriminatory practice has profound implications for some people, “Racial profiling leads to a police stop, the police stop leads to a record, and the record affects an employment opportunity. That sequence compounds over and over again, until the person has become someone who is “known to police”, with the impacts being explained as lives turned upside-down, families broken, and communities ravaged.”
Similarly, the Toronto Star had done their own investigation into the issue of carding and Street Checks, and the complaints were quite similar. Some of the experiences shared by victims of carding included individuals not being able to obtain volunteer positions and secure employment because they had been carded, and one person even reported not being able to travel to the U.S.. Most problematic about it all was that much of the carding and Street Check information gathered was not brought to the attention of the subjects, and some individuals that were affected claimed that it was done without their knowledge.
Municipal and provincial police databases are likely to be full of junk reports and junk information.
There are no good reasons as to why police reports can be left unfinished and allowed to continue existing in a state of limbo, and it is a problem that plagues policing in Ontario. A police report can undergo many changes, but an FOI request would not show all of them or the timestamps of when they were made. It may seem like an impractical position, but this impractical position accurately reflects an impractical reality. When police reports get screwed around with, such information becomes necessary.
With respect to Federal Policing, the issue of incomplete police reports was one of the concerns raised by the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians during their review of Federal Policing. That report found that the RCMP’s data integrity and information management were a major problem. They found that the RCMP’s governance systems were ineffective and there were many incomplete records, outdated reports, inconsistencies, incorrect data, and missing information; that issues with data integrity and information management were undermining effective decision making and operations, and compliance capabilities to address these problems was near zero.
Among the shared similarities between the three levels of policing and their struggles with data integrity and information management, a distinction needs to be made between front-line nature of municipal and provincial police and the complex policing work that federal police are supposed to do. One of the likely reasons as to why the RCMP’s databases were inundated with incomplete reports and other issues ties back to contract policing, and some elements of the RCMP being involved with municipal and provincial policing.
One example of that is how the RCMP offer municipal and provincial policing in British Colombia, whereas Ontario has designated municipal police services and distinct provincial police. If the RCMP were not involved in contract policing services, it is unlikely that there would be so much inconsistency within their database systems. Currently, the vision for the RCMP is to move the federal police service out of contract policing and into more complex policing matters, and that it would make the federal police service more effective, efficient, flexible, and accountable as needed to protect Canada from the most significant national security and criminal threats. And it may resolve many of the data integrity and information management issues that is likely to stem from contract policing.
An example of where carding can go
In the 2010s, the issue of carding was bad enough in Ottawa that a Carleton University criminal justice professor openly wrote to the Ottawa Police Services Board about how one of his students was victimized by carding – a white student who was interested in policing and law. The fourth-year student was stopped by an Ottawa Police Service (OPS) officer for an alleged infraction under the Highway Traffic Act, after he had provided proof of registration for his vehicle. The official explanation behind the ticket was that the student had failed to provide proof of registration, but the student was also told that it was because of the “attitude” he showed toward police during an interaction he had with police on a city bus—six years prior. The student claimed that he was told, “’Anyone else it would be a warning, but because of your record from the mid 2000s, I am giving you a ticket,” and “Don’t be an asshole to us next time.”
After that interaction, the student filed a complaint with the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD), but the outcome would catch everyone by surprise. The OIPRD ruled that the OPS Constable engaged in discreditable conduct when he charged the student, which was the result of carding, but that the officer’s actions were not serious enough for disciplinary measures. Then, details from the incident in the mid 2000s emerged, and they were just as disturbing. The two officers from the mid 2000s had wrote how the student was “cocky” and had “poor attitude towards the police and lack of professionalism”, justifying the report by saying, “for the information should the student choose to apply for OPS for future employment.”
The OIPRD found that the street check in the mid 2000s was used for a purpose other than what it was intended for. The OPS’s leadership commented on the matter by saying that they would develop a “clear policy” on the use of street checks. Back then, the official explanation as to how carding and street checks operated was that police recorded information whenever they came in contact with a person, innocent or otherwise, and stored it in their database. Street checks were described as being used to record everything from someone calling in a tip or lodging a complaint to encounters with suspicious persons and gang members. OPS brass even claimed that non-criminal information was carefully guarded and did not show up in police records checks, but an investigative report later done by the Toronto Star discredited these claims.
The then-Acting Deputy Chief of the OPS went on record to address public concerns. The Deputy Chief noted how all information gathered by police is done within the confines of the law. They also said that street checks were a manner in which police gathered intelligence and leveraged that information to solve investigations, that it gets collected within the confines of the law and used for lawful purposes. More bizarrely, they tried to justify street checks by saying, “If people are innocent, then they are cleared. If there is wrongful information kept on them, they can apply under the municipal freedom and privacy act and they can see what records the police have.” Whatever the intention behind the explanation, it failed to address the core issues involved with the practice of carding, and to consider what resulted from the abuse of these police powers, like what would happen if the reported occurrence of events were entirely wrong.
On the other hand, the Carleton University criminal justice professor’s position was that the two OPS officers attempted to secretly act as a human resources department to harm a person’s reputation and to prevent them from getting a job in policing. The professor then questioned the prevalence of carding abuses and the extent that it has gone on for, and he even suggested that it was worth investigating. He said, “The fact that two police officers who did the field check on the student back in the mid 2000s clearly stated they wanted the information in the OPS database so he would not be able to join the police is shocking. What does it say about the quality of law enforcement?” A great question for everyone to think about.
Context around the mid 2000s carding incident involving the student.
The mid 2000s interaction stemmed from another bus passenger calling the police on the student because he “resembled” a robbery suspect. When the police officers showed up and asked the student to get off the city bus and answer some questions, he did so. After sharing his ID and answering those questions, the student leveraged his educational background in policing foundations and asked the officers why they asked him to get off the bus—and that led to baseless police report against the student. Maybe for the first time in a long time, a white youth was experiencing what many black people have reported as being common and life-long struggles, and it should illustrate why Indigenous and racialized communities have strong views on policing.
Then in 2018, after the changes around carding was brought into effect, 2017 data from the OPS showed such a drastic decline in street checks that one criminal defence lawyer in Ottawa openly questioned the integrity of the numbers. The numbers being reported were that only 7 individuals were affected, six males and one female, despite that between 2011 and 2014, the OPS recorded 23,402 street checks involving 45,802 citizens. Michael Spratt, an award-winning lawyer practising law for nearly two decades, was the lawyer questioning the authenticity of the numbers and noted that despite the reversal in policies, the drop in the number of reported street checks was so low as compared to historic trends that he did not believe them. Maybe the missing numbers related to how carding and street checks blended in with general occurrence report data, effectively “carding 2.0”.
Baseless General Occurrence Reports aka carding 2.0.
Carding 2.0 does not have to be the bedlam within the institution of policing that it is. The core of the issue around general occurrence reports stems from the inability to challenge and dispute the narrative of a general occurrence reports. Challenging and disputing the authenticity of a police report, with the onus of responsibility falling on the subject of that report, should not be any more complicated than filing a complaint against a police officer.
How the inability to challenge and dispute the authenticity of a police report is something that has evaded experts in policing, and the structures around policing, makes no sense. How it seems that no academics, lawyers, or elected officials have explored the issue at greater length makes even less sense. And how the issues around baseless police reports seem to consistently get overlooked by think tanks and human rights bodies at key moments is just as troubling.
Maybe the days of subject matter experts and individuals with legislative and authoritative powers being seen as premier thinkers and leading voices on issues is slowly coming to an end, and where superficial cut and paste responses are enough to circumvent addressing a hot mess like carding 2.0.