WATCH ABOVE: Toronto police unveil the new community engagement policy after years of controversy. Mark Carcasole reports.
TORONTO – The Toronto Police Service has released a new draft policy which revamps the service’s community contact policy – which includes the controversial practice of carding.
Community engagements are any interaction that police have with people in the city that go beyond a regular greeting and could result in some information being taken.
The new policy says police cannot consider “race, place of origin, age, colour, ethnic origin, gender identity or gender expression” when deciding whether to stop someone – unless there’s a specific reason like if one of those factors is included in a witness, suspect or victim description.
The new policy also removes any quota on community engagements that police might have had and directs officers to consider the psychological state of the person before engaging with them.
“We often will engage with members of the community, and in those engagements there can be mistrust, there can be fear,” Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair said during a Friday morning press conference.
“If we are not scrupulously careful in the way in which we go about doing our jobs and the way in which we treat all of the diverse people of this city, we can have a very negative effect on the quality of people’s lives and the way in which they see themselves.”
WATCH: John Tory says people don’t want to live in a city where people feel devalued.
The Toronto Police Service, along with the police services board and former Ontario Chief Justice Warren Winkler spent nearly a year revising the policy after harsh criticism that visible minorities were the primary targets of the community engagements.
Mike McCormack, the president of the Toronto Police Association, says, at first glance, he can support the new policy, suggesting it strikes the proper balance between the concerns of police and those of the community.
WATCH: Alok Mukherjee explains that race and culture shouldn’t be taken into account when stopping people.
“What we have to do from a policing perspective, we have to do our jobs, we have to investigate but we have to be mindful, as I said, of individuals rights, the law, and community concerns and again at first glance, this seems to strike that balance.”
The new policy seeks to make community engagements better, but they won’t stop. Indeed the policy says “community engagements serve as opportunities to foster this cooperation, build mutual trust, and enhance public safety.”
“Policy officers must be able to interact with the public in a manner that encourages this collaboration, not discourages it.”
WATCH: Chief Blair says he wants police to treat everyone with respect.
Mayor John Tory was at Friday morning’s press conference and said the new policy “represents an important landmark in advancing bias free policing.” He also admitted there was an “unacceptable level of distrust” among some pockets of the city and police services.
“We cannot have people of colour seen as objects of fear. At the same time, we cannot and should not have groups in our city with a predetermined hostility to the police.”
But the new policy also requires police to consider “psychological detention” – or the state at which a reasonable person would feel like they are forced to be a part of the interaction.
The policy says that when the officer sees psychological detention may have occurred, they must either end the conversation or read the person their rights.
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