Paola Loriggio, Canadian Press Published Wednesday, June 22, 2022, 1:42 PM EDT Last Updated on Wednesday, June 22, 2022, 4:13 PM EDT
Toronto police have been told to investigate whether race-based data they are legally obliged to collect can ultimately be used to identify and investigate “specific cases of potentially unfair policing” as well as broader, systematic problems.
The Toronto Police Service Board on Wednesday adopted a set of proposals aimed at exploring – and potentially expanding – what can be done with the data under provincial law and its own policies.
“With regard to the identification of specific units or individual employees, the intention is certainly to consider whether and how this can be done, in compliance with the applicable legislation, which creates the framework in which this is done,” said Ryan Tesner, CEO. on board and chief of staff said in an email.
The board will then review the assessment and review its policy on race-based data, Tesner said, adding that the proposals “consider a future situation in which such an analysis could be possible, subject to the legal framework”.
When adopting the policy in 2019, the board said the data would not be used to identify specific employees or manage their performance, but to “identify trends that contribute to professional development and organizational change.”
Last week, Toronto police released the first set of statistics compiled in accordance with the policy. Figures show that blacks and racists face disproportionate use of force, and for some groups, disproportionate law enforcement and more frequent stripping.
The policy was introduced in 2019 after the provincial government passed the Anti-Racism Act, which requires several public sectors to collect such information.
At a news conference last week, interim police chief James Ramer said the data was intended to highlight systemic issues and could not be used to investigate the actions of individual officials, as the Anti-Racism Act and the Privacy Commissioner require them to be anonymized.
Ramer also said that there are processes, such as internal investigations and courts, to deal with the actions of individual officials and that the forces do not tolerate “outright racism”.
Since then, the Ontario Privacy Commissioner has clarified that the law does not prevent police from using data to evaluate and discipline individual employees.
“(The Commissioner for Information and Privacy) has not stated that the Anti-Racism Act or the Municipal Freedom of Information and Privacy Act does not allow the police service to use data – anonymous or otherwise – collected as part of a collection a race-based strategy for informing the oversight, training and discipline of its police officers, ”said a statement from the Office of the Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner.
“These laws are designed to protect people’s personal information, not information that identifies a person in business, professional or official capacity.
Ramer confirmed the explanation of the meeting of the police board on Wednesday, confirming that the office of the Commissioner for Privacy has not provided advice on the rule limiting the use of race-based data to systemic problems.
But he said the analysis of force data was “built to comply with on-board policies and thus simply cannot be used for individual performance issues.”
Toronto Mayor John Torrey, who sits on the police board, said Wednesday that the report “clearly tells us we have a problem”, but anonymization makes it impossible “to investigate and determine where the problem is.”
Although there are cultural and systemic issues that need to be addressed, “I think it is impossible to meet this great challenge without paying attention to individual behavior,” he said.
“I believe that unacceptable behavior is limited to a relatively small group, but even if this number is relatively small … individual behavior can and does affect the overall police culture,” the mayor said.
Last week, Ramer apologized to blacks and racists for the city’s statistics, as statistics were released, saying the forces needed to do better.
Many advocates and community members said the report only confirms what blacks and racists have been saying for decades.
Figures show that black people in the city faced a disproportionate amount of police use and use of force in 2020 and an employee is more likely to point a gun at them – whether perceived as armed or unarmed – than white people in the city. situation.
The report also shows that people in the Middle East have been overrepresented when it comes to the use and use of force, while people in Latin America and East and Southeast Asia have been less enforced than their representation in the population, but have seen more use of force when interacting with the police.
There were also racial differences in the search for nudity, with locals, blacks and whites being searched disproportionately compared to the number of those arrested.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on June 22, 2022.
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