Judge reviews street checks
Young black people say they’re targets
Some young men zip up their pockets at the mall so police won’t think they’re trying to steal anything. Others get singled out in a group of friends and asked if the bike they’re riding really belongs to them.
Joi Hurst, program facilitator with the Coalition for Justice, Unity and Equity, said she regularly hears such complaints from young black people in Windsor. “For whatever the reason may be, they ask the black child first,” said Hurst, one of a few dozen people who attended a public consultation meeting Monday on the practice of police street checks. “Is this your bike? Can you prove that it’s your bike? Or do you have any weed on you? These are some of the things the kids say they have to deal with, and they don’t ask their friends the same questions.” Windsor was the ninth of 12 stops across the province in an independent review of Ontario’s law on police street checks, also known as carding. Appeal Court Justice Michael H. Tulloch is heading the review.
New rules took effect Jan. 1, 2017, requiring police to inform people they don’t have to give their names or other identifying information during street checks. The rules state that refusing to cooperate or walking away can’t be used as a reason to compel someone to give the information. The aim of the rules was to regulate arbitrary stops by police that people have complained are based on race.
Tulloch’s report, to be published by January 2019, will assess the impact of the regulations and whether police follow the rules. Prasanna Ranganathan, Counsel to the Independent Reviewer, said there has been a “full range” of views on the regulation. Some people didn’t even know it existed. “In other instances people had very strong views that the regulation didn’t go far enough to end the practice of street checks or carding,” he said.
Hurst said she plans to discuss what she learned Monday with partners including Windsor police and the Sandwich Teen Action Group.
“We’re going to use that model to teach our youth what to do when you are stopped by the police, what the laws are,” she said. Jayden Oge-Maxwell, 24, from Scarborough, said he attended Monday’s meeting out of a “growing awareness that there needs to be some open dialogue and accountability when it comes to street checks.”
He has never experienced a street check in Windsor where he regularly visits family, but said he’s been stopped several times in Scarborough. Oge-Maxwell said he had a job going door-to-door selling air conditioners and furnaces a couple years ago when police stopped him “as someone of suspicion.” He said he was told to hand over his identification or be arrested.
“My main goal is for officers and law enforcement, and men and women in the community, to be able to look at each other as human beings rather than a badge or a suspect,” he said. “I’d like to get back to the human interaction thing and understand that we can just talk.”