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Mayor John Tory says a secret report to the police services board on the beating of Dafonte Miller, in which an off-duty police officer and his brother are charged, is cause for concern and called the incident "deeply troubling."

"I am concerned at some of what I've read," Tory told reporters Tuesday of a report provided to members of the police services board. "There are a number of unanswered questions which remain with respect to the process that was or was not followed here in terms of the notification of the SIU."

The Special Investigations Unit (SIU), a police oversight agency, has charged Michael Theriault, a Toronto police officer, and his brother Christian Theriault in the assault of the 19-year-old man with a metal pipe in December.
Read more: Alleged victim's family speaks out after Toronto cop charged with assault
Miller's injuries are so severe his eye will need to be surgically removed, his family's lawyer Julian Falconer said earlier.

Following an SIU investigation, both Theriaults have been charged with aggravated assault, assault with a weapon and public mischief. The allegations have not yet been tested in court.

Their father, John Theriault, is a detective who has served more than 30 years with Toronto Police and currently works in the professional standards unit, which deals with officer misconduct, Falconer told the Star.

The provincial Police Services Act dictates that a police service must notify the SIU immediately of any incident that falls under their mandate, including cases of serious injuries involving officers.

Tory told reporters there is a "short" report before the police board outlining what has occurred to date. The board meets Thursday, when Tory said the report is expected to be discussed behind closed doors.

There is no mention of the case on the public agenda, and it is unclear if it will be addressed during the public session of the meeting.

Falconer told the Star he can understand why the service has to be able to debrief its board in private.

"But then one hopes that that process becomes less opaque and that they understand the importance of answering serious questions," he said. "At its heart, the board has a responsibility to do proper oversight . . . This is a policy question: Is this a police service run amok when one of their own - a son of one of their own, two sons of one of their own - does wrong or is this a situation where they're going to be accountable?"

Much of the information concerning SIU investigations is kept secret.

But reporting by the Star's Wendy Gillis found a dozen recent cases where the SIU director says the Toronto Police appear to have failed to co-operate with investigators, including delays in reporting serious injuries to the watchdog.

Following a Star campaign for transparency and public pressure, some internal reports, though at times heavily redacted, were released in the high-profile police shooting death of Toronto man Andrew Loku in which no one was charged.

That included a report required by law from the police chief to the police board on matters arising from an SIU investigation. The board promised to consider releasing future internal reports.

The contents and author of the report before the board Thursday are unknown.

Toronto police spokesperson Mark Pugash said he couldn't discuss confidential board matters. The question remains if Chief Mark Saunders will address Miller's case publicly at the board. Pugash said, if asked to do so by the board, "I dare say he will."

On his regular call-in show on CP24 Tuesday night, Saunders said he couldn't speak to the case, but he defended his service on the reporting process, saying it was determined that the incident involving an off-duty officer didn't meet the threshold to report to the SIU despite the SIU determining charges were warranted. Saunders specifically noted reporting requirements concerning off-duty officers and whether they identify themselves as officers or display any police-issued equipment at the time of the incident.

But Durham police were the responding officers, not Toronto police, who appear to have been involved after the fact. It's unclear why Toronto police would have been involved at all if it was unknown that one of their officers was involved.

"When you read the instruction on when it fits within the mandate, it didn't fit with this particular occurrence." Saunders said. "This wasn't taken lightly. There was no overlooking, there was nothing nefarious, there was no coverup."

Acting police board chair Councillor Chin Lee told the Star that because it concerns a "personnel" issue, he couldn't discuss the report or provide any details about it. Lee said he was "kind of surprised" the mayor mentioned it at all.

Tory said he couldn't speak to specifics of the case as it now makes its way through the legal system.

"Toronto police officers, all of them, are expected - as most of them do all of the time - to adhere to a very high standard of conduct. Whether they're on duty or off duty, they're representatives of Toronto and of the Toronto Police Service."

He said he remains concerned about anti-Black racism in the city, adding the facts of the assault on Miller are still unclear.

"I don't really understand how any of this cannot be labelled as anti-Blackness. I don't know if the mayor is paying attention," said Black Lives Matter co-founder Pascale Diverlus. "This is the person that was attacked, obviously attacked, right? And they are the person that is charged."

How the assault on Miller was reported, Diverlus said, shows promises made about greater accountability surrounding police-involved incidents have not resulted in meaningful change.

"What other incidents have been brushed aside?" she asked. "How many more people do we not know about?"

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Internal report on Dafonte Miller police assault leaves 'unanswered questions,' Mayor Tory says | Toronto Star

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A Black man was assaulted with a metal pipe in Whitby in December, but a Toronto police officer - who was off-duty at the time - and his brother were charged only after the teen's lawyer reported his injuries to the SIU.

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Growing up in Jacksonville, Fla., Rhonda Britton experienced occasional moments of racism. As the only black girl in her junior-high class, she was once told by a white friend that she wasn't allowed to come over and play.

But it was when she moved to Canada as an adult that she felt racism more overtly: In 2011, she discovered a historic plaque in front of her church in Halifax spray painted with the words: Fuck All Niggers.

It was a shock, and not the only one: She'd expected Canadians would be kinder and more welcoming than Americans.
Colour Code Episode 4: We often compare ourselves to the United States where race relations are often dramatic and sometimes violent, but does that mean we're less racist in Canada?

But in Nova Scotia, where a large, historic black community has long faced racial discrimination, racist acts are both subtle and blatant.

She also found that Canadian kids didn't learn as much about black history in schools as Americans; that news articles with black subjects were often filled with hateful online comments; and that racial profiling is common, particularly in the retail sector - in one instance, she recalls a security guard following her around a drug store while white customers faced no such scrutiny.

In her 14 years in Canada, she has been surprised not by the differences in racial tensions in the two countries, but at the parallels - even if Canadians may be reticent about acknowledging it.

"Things are more similar than we think. They have not erupted to the volume that they have in the U.S. ... but I am seeing signs of things coming to a boiling point," says Dr. Britton, who has been a pastor at the Cornwallis Street Baptist Church in Halifax since 2007. "If we want to avoid that, we need to address some of these things - we can't continue to sweep them under the rug."

Lifting up that rug is the aim of this month's Globe and Mail series Colour Code, which is delving into race in Canada through a series of podcasts and articles.

It comes as events south of the border - including all-too-frequent shootings of unarmed black men and ensuing protests, along with a presidential candidate many have deemed a racist - are forcing Canadians to re-examine their own notions of race and racism.

A common national narrative holds Canada up as a country of multiculturalism and inclusiveness. But a recent survey, commissioned for The Globe and conducted by Nanos Research this year, suggests the narrative has cracks.

Seven in ten respondents said there is still "a lot of racism" in Canada. One in five have had racist remarks directed at them. And more than a third said they have made a racist remark in the company of others.

The poll, conducted in April and May of this year, has a silver lining: Eight in 10 Canadians believe it's possible to educate people to make them less racist in their attitudes.

Like Dr. Britton, Nova Browning Rutherford has lived in both countries. She was born in Chatham, Ont., to a black father and white mother, and raised in Edmonton and London, Ont., before spending five years in Los Angeles.

She says that a big difference in the U.S. is the separation of people based on race or ethnicity. She often felt pigeonholed. "Black people don't do that," she was told when she'd mention to colleagues she was going hiking, or out to a Korean restaurant.

She feels relieved to now live in Toronto. But any notion that Canada is morally superior vanishes when she thinks of the deep disparities in living conditions of indigenous peoples.

"No running water for 20 years, that's racism," she says. "I can't go to the States with this arrogant, 'We're Canadian, we're not like that,' when it's worse. And we don't even know about it."

Ms. Browning Rutherford, who is a personal development coach, found race in the U.S. is openly discussed at work and in social circles. But Canadians lack outlets for intense conversations about race. "It does feel that our nature [in Canada] is to be reserved and quiet, and just happy to be here, and we don't want to make any waves. But if we want it to be better, we have to get a little uncomfortable."
What we don't know
Part of the problem is that it's hard to figure out, with much precision, what's going on. Unlike the United States, where race-related data is routinely collected on everything from jobless rates to university-graduation rates, Canada "cannot tell its own story," says Arjumand Siddiqi, associate professor at the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health, who has lived and worked in both countries.

She hit a wall in 2007, when she wanted to test if race-based health inequalities varied in different societies. Most of the research at the time relied on U.S. data.

While working at the University of North Carolina, she began to analyze a joint Canada/U.S. survey of health. When she accessed the data from Canada, however, detail on race was suppressed (for privacy reasons, she was told). All she could glean was information on people who were "white" or "non-white." She couldn't determine whether health outcomes within racial groups varied.

"We're left with a muddy picture. We are left not knowing whether there is a problem that is specific, widespread, changing over time, whether we need to be doing more or less with some groups."

Health care could use more accurate information. One paper last year that looked at ethnicity and breast cancer noted that data about race or ethnicity "are rarely collected" in a systematic manner in Canada's health-care settings.

That data deficiency "certainly does not mean that ethnoracial inequalities do not exist in Canada; indeed, lack of data often limits the ability to accurately and adequately identify health inequalities and inequities," wrote Dr. Aisha Lofters of the University of Toronto.

In Halifax, Dr. Britton, who has four degrees, including a doctorate, has found that a dearth of data on African Nova Scotians has hurt efforts to push for racial equity in the province. "With no data being collected, what does that mean? No funding" to address specific health issues in communities.

Researchers have hit similar roadblocks trying to analyze employment outcomes, incomes or wealth by race.

One missing piece of the puzzle is jobless stats on indigenous reserves, which the government doesn't collect on a monthly or even yearly basis. Another piece is about wages. A widely reported study released last week in the U.S. - which found the wage gap between white and black Americans is worse today than in 1979 - isn't currently possible to conduct in Canada, says Sheila Block, senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

In the justice system, data is lacking on the ethnicity of homicide victims and fatalities from police encounters.

People are often grouped as "visible minorities," in the justice system. The catch-all term is "problematic," noted U of T's Akwasi Owusu-Bempah in a 2011 report entitled Whitewashing Criminal Justice in Canada. Lumping people together "obscures racial differences by averaging groups that are overrepresented with those that are underrepresented."
What we do know
The absence of detailed data may be hiding inequalities that, ultimately, harm police effectiveness and hurt community relations, he said.

The evidence that does exist suggests Canada has challenges of its own.

Biases persist in Canadian workplaces. In one field experiment, published in 2011, University of Toronto researchers Philip Oreopoulos and Diane Dechief sent almost 8,000 résumés to employers in Canada's three largest cities, from applicants with either anglophone or foreign-sounding names. They found that job seekers with names like Matthew Wilson were 35 per cent more likely to get a callback than those with a name like Samir Sharma - regardless of work experience, education or language proficiency.

Health disparities persist, in both countries. In a study published this year, Prof. Siddiqi and a team found racial inequalities exist in health outcomes (such as heart attacks, hypertension and obesity) in Canada and the U.S. The magnitudes differ though - the gap between blacks and whites is greater in the U.S. than in Canada. However, the indigenous-white disparity is larger in Canada than in the U.S.

In terms of hate crimes, Canada has a higher recorded rate than the United States - 1,295 in 2014, or a rate of 3.7 per 100,000 people, according to Statscan. By comparison, the FBI recorded 5,479 hate crimes in the same year in the U.S., 1.84 per 100,000 people.

Forty-seven per cent of hate crimes were racially motivated in both countries. In Canada, blacks and Arabs were most frequently targeted and the types of crimes ranged from threatening phone calls and public incitement of hatred, to harassment and assault.

In Canada, as in the United States, problems in policing are thorny issues. In July, the RCMP pulled over and questioned a black man in Bathurst, N.B., after they received calls about a "suspicious man." He had, in fact, just been reading a book.

In the same month, Abdirahman Abdi, a Somali-Canadian man, died in Ottawa after a confrontation with police. The problems go beyond just one or two incidents.
Acknowledging the challenges
In December, 2015, the head of the RCMP Bob Paulson told indigenous chiefs "I understand that there are racists in my police force. I don't want them to be in my police force."

Canadian civil-rights leaders should not be forgotten. Children in both countries are well aware of American legends Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. But what about Canadian trailblazers such as Viola Desmond or Mary Two-Axe Earley? Schools can foster a deeper sense of Canadian history and the effects of colonization by teaching such stories.

Tackling racial discrimination also requires acknowledging there's a problem in the first place, says Anthony Stewart, an English professor at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa., who is Canadian and the author of Visitor: My Life in Canada.

Prof. Stewart has had a successful career in academia. But as a black man, he spent a lifetime dealing with grinding, day-to-day racism in Canada.
Champions on both sides of the border
"If the national narrative is based on that there aren't as many lynchings in Canada, or police shootings in Canada - the national narrative needs to set its bar higher," says Prof. Stewart. "Because that isn't helping the people who are dealing with the little everyday things, all the time. And that's what gets to you."
Canada
Virtually every child in America is familiar with civil rights activists Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. Most Canadian kids know about them, too. But what about Canada's own champions of equal rights and the impact they have had on the country? Here's a look at three influential leaders on both sides of the border.

Viola Desmond has been dubbed Canada's Rosa Parks - only her act of resistance took place nine years earlier, in 1946. Police dragged her from a movie theatre in Nova Scotia and put her in jail overnight after she refused to leave the whites-only section. Her courageous stance against racism and segregation was important to Nova Scotia's civil-rights movement.

Mary Two-Axe Earley was born on a Mohawk reserve in Kahnawake, Que. She championed equal rights for indigenous women and spent decades standing up for women who had been denied "Indian" status if they married non-Aboriginal men. The discriminatory Indian Act was changed in 1985, affecting the lives of thousands.
United States
Born in slavery in Maryland, Josiah Henson escaped to Canada in 1830 with his wife and family, settling in Dresden, Ont. He was involved in the Underground Railroad, leading nearly 200 slaves to freedom. His story served as inspiration for the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. - Tavia Grant

Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist minister who led the U.S. civil-rights movement from the 1950s until his assassination in 1968. He played a crucial role in ending the segregation of African-Americans. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and is still widely cited for his I Have a Dream speech.

Cesar Chavez was a Mexican-American union leader and labour organizer who worked to improve the treatment, pay and working conditions of farm workers. He used non-violent means, such as boycotts, marches and hunger strikes, to raise awareness about the plight of migrant workers.

Rosa Parks's refusal to give up her seat on the bus for a white passenger in Montgomery, Ala., spurred boycotts, protests, arrests - and nationwide efforts to end segregation of public facilities. She is known as the "mother of the modern-day civil rights movement."

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Canada's racial divide: Confronting racism in our own backyard

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Growing up in Jacksonville, Fla., Rhonda Britton experienced occasional moments of racism. As the only black girl in her junior-high class, she was once told by a white friend that she wasn't allowed to come over and play.

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THUNDER BAY-There is an aboriginal woman who is afraid to speak of a vicious sexual assault.

On Dec. 27, 2012, the 36-year-old mother was walking to the corner store when a car pulled up and the men inside threw garbage at her while they called her a "squaw" and a "dirty Indian."

Two men then dragged her by the hair into the back seat. They took her outside the city limits and raped her, tried to strangle her and then left her for dead.

As she was being assaulted, she was told they were doing it because she was a First Nations woman.

"We know you Indian girls like this," she was told.

The men also warned her to keep her mouth shut: they had done it before and they would do it again.

The mother of six then did everything she was supposed to. She went to the police with her own mother and gave a statement. And then she could not go any further. She left the police station and, after seeing one of her attackers with his wife and children in a mall, she left town.

Her mother, overwhelmed with grief, spoke to the Star about the assault but asked for anonymity to protect her daughter and family.

"When I heard her statement, I was in shock. I was feeling like she could have been one of the missing and murdered women," she said.

Thunder Bay Police conducted a "very thorough investigation" in what they consider a hate crime. So far, no arrests have been made, says Chris Adams, executive officer for Thunder Bay Police Service.
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Keith Hobbs, the mayor of Thunder Bay, is aware of the assault on this woman. Hobbs has heard the racist slurs, and cringes at the comments on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages.

"Every city - I don't care where you are in the world - has issues with racism. Don't be afraid to say you have racism in your city. If you never admit it, you'll never fix it," Hobbs says.

Earlier this year, when Maclean's magazine named Winnipeg the most racist city in Canada, Hobbs sent Mayor Brian Bowman a message.

"I just sent the Winnipeg mayor a letter that said, 'Welcome to the club. We have the same issues. Saskatoon has them. Vancouver does. So does Toronto. It can't be just addressed by Mayor Keith Hobbs," he says.

The issue of McLean's magazine that named Winnipeg the most racist city in Canada. Thunder Bay mayor Keith Hobbs sent a letter to his Winnipeg counterpart that said "Welcome to the club."

Getting to the root causes of racism requires understanding and, most of all, education, says Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler.

"There is racism everywhere. Sometimes it is subtle and sometimes it is front and centre. It comes in different forms. The newer forms are from social media; that is accessible to everyone. It is just different mechanisms for expressing ignorant views and racist comments," Fiddler says.

Teresa Trudeau, a traditional healing co-ordinator at the Anishnawbe Mushkiki Thunder Bay Aboriginal Health Centre, acted as the assaulted woman's voice.

"We didn't lose her ... They threatened her. Told her they would do it again," says Trudeau.

Trudeau's office is next to the Anishnawbe Mushkiki healing circle, a room that is a stunning wooden sphere and a sacred place to practice traditional healing.

Trudeau pauses before she shares a traditional Cherokee saying: "If you want to defeat a nation, destroy the women first."

About 120,000 people call Thunder Bay home. By 2040, it's estimated that half of the city's population will be aboriginal.

Only recently have the people who live here started to talk openly about the divisions between them.

Any indigenous person in this city will tell you that they or people they know have been victims of racism: slurs hurled from passing cars, eggs and garbage hurled at them.

Greg Quachegan, a teacher at Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School, was walking with his young daughters when someone yelled, "Bogans," at them. He has no idea what it means, but it's a slur aboriginal people hear often.

Ann Magiskan, a Thunder Bay aboriginal liaison worker who is spearheading an anti-racism program, saw a swift attitude change when a potential landlord saw her at the door.

Thunder Bay aboriginal liaison worker Ann Magiskan has experienced "disgusting" racism first hand. The anti-racism programme she is spearheading provides sensitivity training to 2,500 employees.

"It is disgusting what happens. When my husband and I walked in, they said, 'We've rented to people like you before.' When I asked what she meant by that, she didn't answer," Magiskan says.

NAN, which represents 49 northern First Nations, filed an Ontario human rights complaint against top police brass in 2012 after a Thunder Bay police officer accidentally sent out a fake press release after a suspect was arrested in the killing of 65-year-old Adam Yellowhead.

The email's subject line read, "Fresh Mouth Killer Captured!!" Thunder Bay court heard Yellowhead had been drinking mouthwash with his now-convicted killer on the night of his death.

NAN also requested that racism and the Thunder Bay police's investigations be examined during the inquest into the deaths of seven indigenous high-school students. The students died over a 10-year period. Coroner Dr. David Eden rejected both requests.

Fiddler was stunned. "We need to look at the broader issues, including aspects of racism and the role of the police investigation. I think there are obviously some strong parallels with these cases and cases concerning murdered and missing indigenous women. On the surface, these (investigations) weren't taken seriously," he adds.

Earlier this year, Thunder Bay Police launched an investigation of Facebook pages that they characterized as "extreme racism" against First Nations people. One page, called Thunder Bay Dirty, had 4,000 followers.

The original Thunder Bay Dirty Facebook page was shut down in June. "There were a number of community members who attempted to counter this page. We could not establish criminality in it following our investigation based on a number of complaints. As you know, the social media world often walks a very thin line between poor taste, racism and hurtful content," says Adams of the Thunder Bay police.

In last year's municipal election, Libertarian city council candidate Tamara Johnson took out a full-page ad in the Chronicle Journal daily that questioned why First Nations people have treaty rights and special status.

The Thunder Bay Courthouse where an inquest into the deaths of seven First Nations students who died over a 10-year period is underway. Initial investigations into the deaths were not taken seriously.

"Voters:" Johnson's ad read; "No group of people are above the laws of Ontario. No group of people can illegally block our roads or railways. No group of people are 'entitled' to handouts. No group of people are owed a 'debt' by today's taxpayers. No group of people 'own' Crown lands. Crown lands are public lands. Not native lands. We all own these lands. No group of people are 'special' and deserve first class 'Super Citizen' status."

"Help me stop this doctrine of entitlement. Above all else, help me stop the 'gravy train.'"

Clint Harris, the publisher of the newspaper, defended the decision to publish the ad, saying everyone has the right to an opinion, especially during an election.

"Running the ad is not an endorsement of its content," Harris wrote in an editorial published June 12, 2014. "It is important that candidates are given the opportunity to reveal their ideas to voters."

Thunder Bay is on the front lines of dealing with the after-effects of Canada's national tragedy: the residential school system that took nearly 100,000 indigenous children away from their families over a multi-generational period, in order to school the Indian out of them. The fallout has been immense.

Mayor Hobbs knows that to end the racism in his city he has got to get a handle on the social ills eroding Thunder Bay.

"In 1997, when I was Thunder Bay Police association vice-president, we identified that Thunder Bay had the highest rates of alcohol, drug and mental illness in Ontario. Nothing has changed. A big thrust of our strategic plan is to take on these issues, but we get very little support from other areas of government," he says.

"We can't do it ourselves."

Mayor of Thunder Bay Keith Hobbs says all cities have problems with racism, but cities need to admit they have the problem before they have any hope of fixing it.

Proof of the city's struggle can be seen in Thunder Bay receiving the burdensome title of murder capital of Canada in 2014.

There was an "above average" number of homicides reported in the city last year. Out of 11 homicide victims in Thunder Bay in 2014, seven were aboriginal.

Mix in high addiction rates, a lack of treatment and supportive housing programs, and Thunder Bay's problems are toxic.

The arrest rate for intoxicated persons is 2,608 per 100,000, the highest in Ontario. It is the leading reason for arrest in Thunder Bay, comprising half of all arrests, according to the Thunder Bay Drug Strategy Report of 2011.

Hobbs wants addiction programs and affordable housing, for which the vacancy is less than 1 per cent.

His pleas for help in housing were ignored by the former Conservative government. But now that he has Cabinet minister Hajdu on board, change may be on the horizon.

"People aren't just sleeping in tents, but under vehicles and in bushes," he said. "When I did walkabouts as a police officer in my former life, I stepped over people sleeping in open air ... We see a lot of people migrate down from the northern communities. Our Shelter House is full every night. We have encampments, aboriginal people living in camps in the bush," Hobbs says.

Thunder Bay has a 22-bed detox centre but it needs at least 100 beds, he says. "Kenora has 50 beds for a population of 20,000. And we have 22 beds" for a population of 120,000.

Hajdu says the answer isn't as simple as adding emergency shelter beds, as that only takes people off the streets for a few hours or a couple of days.

"Expanding a detox centre without any next-step plan ... is not the solution. We do need a range of affordable housing that ranges from the most supportive, like (offering) a managed alcohol program, to more affordable or public housing for people who don't need any support: they just need a place to live," she says.

In the meantime, before any federal infrastructure funding floats down, the city is trying to teach tolerance.

"We are doing something as a city, and I'm proud of that. We have a long way to go but we are doing something," Hobbs says.

He points to the "Respect. It begins with you and me" campaign slogan for Thunder Bay's new customer service pilot project, and to the presence of the Guardian Angels.

The Angels is a volunteer-based organization that aims to keep communities safe by patrolling streets and organizing youth groups. There are 130 chapters around the world. Thunder Bay's chapter is run by Ian Hodgkinson, a Thunder Bay native who is also a professional wrestler known as Vampiro.

Hobbs invited Hodgkinson to his home and asked him to help.

"Ian is a good guy. He used to be a star wrestler; he was big in Mexico. He started a Guardian Angels chapter in Mexico and he was kidnapped at gunpoint twice," notes Hobbs, a former Thunder Bay staff sergeant.

"Ian is doing an awesome job. People respect him. They don't fear him but they respect him. We had 11 homicides in Thunder Bay last year and we've only had one this year," he says.

Magiskan never knows what to expect when she begins a new session.

"I'll walk into a room and I'll say, 'I'm pretty sure that most of you in this room would rather not be here and you are wondering, 'What the hell am I here for? What do I need this education for? I don't deal with native people.'"

Then Magiskan will recite the facts: Who were the first peoples in Canada? Who forms the fastest growing demographic in Thunder Bay? Who are the people once relegated to non-person status in our society?

The Thunder Bay headquarters of the Guardian Angels doubles as a gym and a classroom offering courses in life skills and self defence.

"Honestly, I've had people walk out," she says.

People frequently come from the north to Thunder Bay, looking for work, to go to school or start a new life, she adds.

"It is shocking, really. Are you aboriginal? Strike against you. Female? Strike against you. Young aboriginal man? Strike against you," she says, shaking her head.

"When you see an alcoholic aboriginal person on the street, you may want to ask yourself, 'what have they been through?'"

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One rape. A hate crime. Thunder Bay's simmering divides come to light | Toronto Star

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THUNDER BAY-There is an aboriginal woman who is afraid to speak of a vicious sexual assault. On Dec. 27, 2012, the 36-year-old mother was walking to the corner store when a car pulled up and the men inside threw garbage at her while they called her a "squaw" and a "dirty Indian."

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Black people with no history of criminal convictions have been three times more likely to be arrested by Toronto police for possession of small amounts of marijuana than white people with similar backgrounds, according to a Toronto Star analysis.

They've also been more likely to be detained for bail, the data shows.

The disparity is largely due to targeting of Black people by Toronto police, according to criminologists and defence lawyers interviewed by the Star, who note that surveys show little difference in marijuana use between Black and white people.

Anthony Morgan, a human rights lawyer and community activist, called the statistics "another example of the failed war on drugs."

As Canada moves toward the legalization of marijuana, the Star examined 10 years' worth of Toronto Police Service marijuana arrest and charge data, obtained in a freedom-of-information request.

From 2003 to 2013, Toronto police arrested 11,299 people whose skin colour was noted - and who had no prior convictions - for possessing up to 30 grams of marijuana. These individuals were not on parole or probation when arrested.

According to how police recorded skin colour, 25.2 per cent of those people were Black, 52.8 per cent were white, 15.7 per cent were brown, and 6.3 per cent were categorized as "other."

For Black people, the rate of arrest is significantly higher than their proportion of Toronto's population in the 2006 census, which is 8.4 per cent. Whites represented 53.1 per cent of people in the city.

"I can't say I'm surprised by the glaring disproportionality," says Danardo Jones, director of legal services at the African Canadian Legal Clinic, "but these are just startling numbers."

The Star matched "brown" and "other" skin colour categories used by police with ethnic backgrounds used by Statistics Canada. That put the city's "brown" skinned population at 14.7 per cent and those in the "other" category at 23.8 per cent.

Toronto police did not dispute the Star's analysis but in an email response, the service said it continues to believe the Star's use of census data for comparison to carding and charge data is "misleading."

"This is not to suggest that there is not a continued need for education and training on the issue of disparity and fair and impartial policing, of which the TPS is committed," police said in the email.

The police marijuana data also indicates Black people are more likely to receive different treatment after an arrest - a finding consistent with Star analyses that date back to 2002.

Most of the 11,299 people without prior convictions were released at the scene when caught with small amounts of marijuana. But 15.2 per cent of Black people - the highest rate among the racial groups - were detained for a bail hearing. That compares to only 6.4 per cent of whites.

The data released to the Star does not indicate whether the marijuana charges were accompanied by a second, more serious offence, which can affect how people are released or detained. It's likely that people held for bail are facing another charge.

In response to Star queries, police said 54 per cent of the marijuana possession arrests in the data involved at least one other criminal charge.

Other discretionary factors that can impact not being released at the scene or being held for bail include having been stopped by police before (carding), no ID, no fixed address, having been let go once already on a possession arrest, attitude, where you were stopped and who you were with. The data doesn't indicate these things.

Young people, ages 12 to 18, represent 22 per cent of arrests for possession between 2003 and 2013.

The disparity in police treatment is even greater when it comes to youth with no prior convictions who are 12-18. Among Black kids, the proportion detained for bail remains at 15 per cent. But the rate for white kids falls to 3.2 per cent.

Morgan, a lawyer with Falconers LLP, describes the "over-policing" of Black people as a consequence of racism.

Yet, looking at the proportions of people of all ages released unconditionally - meaning a marijuana offence was noted in a police database but the charge not formally laid - there was little difference by skin colour.

About one in five people arrested were released unconditionally with no charge, say police.

The 2015 Ontario Student Drug Use Survey, conducted by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, found 19 per cent of 1,000 Toronto high school students reported using cannabis at least once in the past year. Of those, 39 per cent were white; 14 per cent Black; and 47 per cent "other" or mixed race. (The Black proportion for ages 12-18 in the 2006 census was 12 per cent.)

"There's very little evidence to suggest that Black people actually use more drugs," says Scot Wortley, a University of Toronto criminology professor, whose Toronto Youth Crime Victimization Survey in 2000 showed similar marijuana use for Black and white youth.

If monitoring by law enforcement were equal, you would expect similar charge rates for Black and white people, Wortley adds.

Yet an analysis of all marijuana possession offences noted in the police data from 2003 to 2013 reveals greater disproportionate results.

A third of the 40,635 marijuana charges during that decade - 33.8 per cent - were against Black people. The charges were for possession of no more than 30 grams, and for possession for the purpose of trafficking.

Marijuana possession arrests and offences noted in the data steadily increased during that decade. The trend parallels the police practice of "carding" people not involved in crimes. A 2010 Star investigation found that Black people in Toronto are 3.2 times more likely to be stopped, questioned and documented by police than white people. The ratio remained constant in three subsequent Star examinations of carding data.

"I think the overlap is clear," Jones, of the African Canadian Legal Clinic, says of the rise in carding and marijuana charges. "If you over-police, or you over-surveil, you are going to find particular kinds of offences kind of shoot up."

The Star shared its analysis with Toronto police in May and provided an updated version in early June, along with findings it sought comment on. In late June, the service emailed a response that did not address most areas the Star sought comment on.

Aggregate stats for the years after the decade covered in the data, released to the Star by police, show marijuana charges peaked in 2012, at 5,200, and decreased steadily through 2016, when only 2,303 were recorded.

"This (decrease) can be attributed to a number of factors including a decrease in the number of interactions police are having with the community and the reassignment of resources to other (illegal drug) priorities, such as trafficking and other substances," the service said in the email.

"It is also possible that officers are choosing to exercise their discretion when it comes to arresting individuals for marijuana possession," it continued. "Generally speaking, more of that can be expected as the TPS uses a diversion program specific to young people who are found to be committing less serious crimes.

"However, as long as the possession of marijuana continues to be illegal, the Service will continue to lay charges as appropriate."

Criminal defence lawyers and criminologists say it's no coincidence that marijuana charges increased along with carding stops during the decade covered by the data. The stops often result in searches, and charges if marijuana is found.

The now-disbanded Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS), a police tactical unit set up in 2005, carded Black people more disproportionately than any other police unit. The provincially funded program was deployed in neighbourhoods where recent violence had taken place, and where populations tend to be poorer and more diverse.

"It's really sad when you realize the effects of TAVIS and what they call pro-active community policing," says Daniel Brown, a Toronto lawyer who has regularly defended clients on marijuana charges. "What it's really done is criminalize an entire generation of young Black males, over something that's now on the verge of being legal.

"What TAVIS taught officers to do is shake down young black males, because if you look hard enough you're probably going to find something," he adds.

"They didn't go into the parks of Forest Hill to shake down the rich white kids. They spent their time in the parks and community centres of the Jane and Finch corridor, and it was like shooting fish in a barrel."

The data obtained by the Star shows that neighbourhoods with the fewest marijuana charges are typically whiter and wealthier. Kofi Hope argues pot smoking in these places has gained a "quasi legalized" status, with police often saying little more than "put it out."

"There is not the same interest of police in controlling young people in Rosedale or Forest Hill," says Hope, executive director of the CEE Centre for Young Black Professionals, which provides skills training and career development programs for young Black people.

Liberal MP Bill Blair, police chief in Toronto during most of the time period covered by the marijuana data, has in his new role as the government's point person on legalization acknowledged the disparities.

"I think there's a recognition that the current enforcement disproportionately impacts poor neighbourhoods and racialized communities, and there's something unjust about that," Blair was quoted as saying in a 2016 Maclean's profile. He has also described the disparity as "one of the great injustices in this country."

The Star provided Blair, parliamentary secretary to the justice minister and attorney general, a copy of the marijuana analysis in early June and asked for an interview. At publication time, he had not responded.

The government has so far released no plans regarding Canadians saddled with criminal records because of marijuana.

High numbers of marijuana charges and high levels of carding generally overlap in the city's poorer, more diverse neighbourhoods, the Star analysis found. Areas that are wealthier and whiter see lower levels of both.

"One of the things I find most troubling, although not surprising, is that cannabis possession arrests increased in tandem with the practice of carding in Toronto," says Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, an assistant sociology professor at the University of Toronto with an extensive background in criminology. Like others interviewed for this story, the Star shared with him its analysis.

Carding, he notes, was used as a measure of performance and officers professionally benefited from filling out more contact cards and were encouraged to do so by their superiors.

"As carding was so concentrated among the poor and racialized, they have disproportionately experienced the negative consequences - including criminalization," says Owusu-Bempah. "So what we have is a situation where police officers benefited personally from the further marginalization of vulnerable Torontonians."

Between 2003 and 2010, the neighbourhood where Toronto residents were most likely to be arrested for possession was in police patrol zone 144, on the western edge of downtown. (Police reclassified and reshaped some zone boundaries in 2011, including zone 144, making it difficult to examine and compare anything after 2010.)

Police documented at least 580 pot possession offences in the area bordered by King St. W. to the south, Bloor St. W. to the north, Bathurst St. to the west and Spadina Ave. to the east. It is home to Kensington Market, Chinatown, hip Queen St. W. and Alexandra Park, a community that has struggled with drugs and violence.

One of more than 70 police patrol zones in the city, the area is also where police were busy carding people, on average, about 15 times each day, from 2008 to 2013. The Black population is 7 per cent, white 53 per cent in the zone, which attracts a lot of people from other areas.

Alexandra Park, a rent-geared-to-income community for much of its history, is a socially vibrant place where people "live a lot of their lives in the outdoor spaces," says Bridget Sinclair, director of community services at St. Stephen's Community House. It also has a history of tension with police.

In late 2009 and into 2010, police kept close watch on a dispute between rival gangs - one based in Alexandra Park, the other in Regent Park. Members of both gangs were "actively involved in drug trafficking, assaults, robberies and firearms-related offences," according to minutes of a community police liaison committee. The dispute played a role in a 2012 shooting at the Eaton Centre that claimed two lives and injured six.

Police flooded the area with officers, including those from TAVIS.

TAVIS was "very much a part of the neighbourhood in ways that were not positive for many people," says Sinclair, whose organization provides supports to Alexandra Park residents. "And there were some very big incidents that happened between police and young people during the years that data has been collected."

Much has changed since then, including a redevelopment project that has displaced many of the subsidized housing residents whose homes were demolished or renovated, and market-priced condos built.

A dramatic growth in marijuana dispensaries in the last two years has attracted partiers from the nearby Entertainment District and ensured a visible police presence. But Sinclair says police are trying to rebuild their relationship with the community.

In June, the provincial government, in conjunction with Toronto police, announced funding for a "pre-charge" diversion program allowing officers discretion in laying charges. Youth would avoid court and a record by working in community-based programs. St. Stephen's is one of those programs.

The area of the city with the next highest number of pot possession charges between 2003 and 2010 is zone 121, a pocket of the Weston-Mt. Dennis neighbourhood that has, proportionately, the largest Black population in the city at 27 per cent, and where police also carded heavily. Police averaged 22 contact cards per day from 2008 to 2013. It was the highest carded area in 2009 and 2010, with close to 30 contact cards filled out each day. From 2003 to 2010, police recorded 550 pot possession offences in the zone.

In 2012, the Star profiled the neighbourhood that had been plagued by gun homicides and targeted by the TAVIS unit.

The relationship between youth and police was "toxic," said one youth worker at the time. Mark Saunders, now Toronto's police chief, had been brought in to run 12 Division, which includes zone 121. Violent crime decreased but tensions ran high, with young people reporting they were routinely stopped. Often, the stops involved searches.

Saunders was working on improving relations.

"I get it when you're talking about toxic," Saunders told the Star in 2012. "But I'm getting phone calls from people who are very excited. They're going, 'Great, when are you coming out into the community?' "

By mid-2013, carding had plummeted amid increasing controversy and a rule that required police to issue a carding "receipt." The practice was suspended Jan. 1, 2015, by Saunders's then boss, Blair. New provincial carding regulations kicked in this year.

From 2003 to 2013, police noted only 111 marijuana possession charges in patrol zone 325, the lowest number. The north Toronto area includes Hoggs Hollow, home to multimillion-dollar homes, and the Rosedale Golf Club. Nearly 80 per cent of the people who live there are white. Between 2008 and 2013, police carded about four people a day.

The second lowest number of marijuana charges noted - 123 over 10 years - was in zone 533, which includes tony Yorkville and university frat houses. Three-quarters of residents are white. Police carded on average 13 people a day between 2008 and 2013.

Annamaria Enenajor, a Toronto criminal defence lawyer with a focus on civil rights, sees what she describes as policing bias on her walks to her office near University of Toronto student housing.

"I don't see them doing raids on those frat houses," she says. "It's all drunken white boys over there. I walk by and I definitely smell weed.

"It comes from the legacy of racism and the reality of racism," she adds. "Mistakes by white Canadians are forgivable and mistakes by Black Canadians are deviant and require punishment."

Morgan says the drug statistics "expose what many in and outside of Black communities have recognized as a war on Blacks."

He notes that for many Black teens, getting searched for marijuana is their first interaction with authorities. Those charged often can't afford a lawyer and rarely get the option of settling their charge with a donation to charity, for example.

They instead appear in a courtroom where everyone, from the judge to the administrative clerk, tends to be white. "The sense that 'the system is out to get me' ends up having a very visual representation," Morgan says.

Court appearances get missed and bail conditions broken, often something as minor as breaking curfew by a half-hour. That forces a downward spiral into the justice system followed by more serious charges, and the humiliation and possible job loss that comes with jail time.

A criminal record "further entrenches an underclass status," Morgan says. "It's almost like a scarlet letter that they feel they carry around. And it increases the sense of being watched and targeted by systems, a sense that systems are waiting for them to fail."
METHODOLOGY
The Star obtained Toronto Police Service marijuana possession arrest and charge data for 2003 to 2013 in a freedom-of-information request.

The data includes information about 34,646 arrests of 27,635 individuals, and 40,634 associated offences for simple possession and possession for the purpose of trafficking. Some people were arrested multiple times for marijuana offences over the timeframe examined.

Instead of names, police released randomly generated unique numbers for individuals. Included in the data are gender, age, skin colour, exact charge, the patrol area where the arrest occurred and how people were released. Also included were indicators for whether people had previous convictions, or were on bail, probation or parole at time of arrest.

Police identify people as having one of four skin colours (black, brown, white and other). The Star compared arrest and charge rates by skin colour to Toronto's population, using Statistics Canada data from the 2006 census. This is far from perfect, since the census data does not have categories for "brown" and "other" in its ethnic and racial breakdown.

As the Star has done numerous times since a groundbreaking 2002 series into race, policing and crime in Toronto, and subsequent examinations of carding data, ethnicities and racial categories were placed into either "brown" or "other" based on clues in the police data, including birth countries where the country was other than Canada.

Associated non-marijuana charges were not included in the data. For example, if an individual was simultaneously charged with simple possession and a firearms offence, the firearms offence is not present in the data requested. An associated, more serious charge can affect how an individual is released, or held for a bail hearing.

Also not included in the data are outcomes for cases that headed to court, which the police do not track.

Data for the year 2013 is incomplete, as the police service switched over to a new records management system late that year. That was the cut-off point for the Star's request.

The Star shared its findings with police before publication. Police expressed no concerns with the analysis but have historically been critical of the Star for using census data for baseline comparisons. In many such comparisons, it is the only baseline available.

In an emailed response to the Star, the service said it "continues to believe the comparison between the ethnicity of those charged with a crime and the ethnicity breakdown of the city based on census data is misleading."

The Star has made available by PDF, below, a detailed findings package. To obtain the underlying dataset contact reporter Jim Rankin at jrankin@thestar.ca .

This story has been updated

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Toronto marijuana arrests reveal 'startling' racial divide | Toronto Star

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Black people with no history of criminal convictions have been three times more likely to be arrested by Toronto police for possession of small amounts of marijuana than white people with similar backgrounds, according to a Toronto Star analysis. They've also been more likely to be detained for bail, the data shows.

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Only six in 10 Canadians think Islamophobia is a problem in their country. For anyone concerned with combatting racism, this is alarming, particularly when coupled with the 38 per cent of respondents to Maclean's Canada Project survey, in partnership with Abacus Data, who somewhat or strongly disagree that it's an issue at all.

A fundamental requirement for dismantling discrimination is recognition. So it's unacceptable that so many Canadians think Islamophobia does not exist-or have a flippant understanding of it. These attitudes disrupt the work of individuals attempting to combat racism, and endanger people by default.

Like anti-black racism, Islamophobia is an insidious, irrefutable issue in Canadian society. Denying its existence suggests white Canadians remain isolated from their Muslim neighbours, leading them to treat them as an alien group. "I think that despite a lot of progress, post 9/11, many Canadians still view Muslims as a homogenous group with only one foot inside the Canadian cultural identity," says actor, filmmaker and lawyer Arsalan Shirazi. "And any time you can define so many people as the 'other,' you can start to strip away the complexity of a community, which allows you to scapegoat and vilify."

You can see this playing out throughout Canadian society. Take the reaction to a private member's motion tabled by Liberal MP Iqra Khalid. M-103 was designed to "eliminate Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination" and calls on the government to "recognize the need to quell the increasing public climate of hate and fear." Conservatives attempted to remove the term Islamophobia, with Conservative MP David Anderson claiming the word lacks meaning and the bill could inhibit freedom of speech. But this argument simply fuels the discrimination that the bill attempted to combat, sometimes leading to hysteria, as Faisal Kutty, a professor at Osgoode Hall, has argued. Hateful rhetoric and death threats have been directed against Khalid, including accusations of being a terrorist sympathizer. We've also seen a Quran destroyed at a protest against religious accommodation at the Peel District School Board earlier this year. Moreover, there was the Quebec City mosque attack in March, a mass shooting during evening prayers that left six Muslim Canadians dead. Following the attacks, we finally saw something of a national conversation around Islamophobia. Yet Muslim Canadians, academics and activists have been highlighting these issues for decades.

RELATED: In Quebec City, a moment of painful truth

Indeed, plenty of work has already been done to capture, contextualize and fully understand what Islamophobia means. A paper published in 2011 by the Ontario Human Rights Commission highlights the "negative stereotyping and discrimination as a result of pre-existing perceptions of Muslims as 'different' from the rest of Canadian society, along with negative associations of their communities with violence and terrorism" in the decade following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City. These problems even occur in institutions that pledge tolerance and inclusion, like Canadian universities. Following the Quebec City mosque attack, Muslim students publicly recounted incidents that are part of their daily reality: the defacing of posters for a conference on Islam at Durham College and the University of Ontario Institute of Technology; and the distributing of anti-Muslim flyers and insults on student election materials at McGill University, the University of Calgary and the University of Ottawa. A student at Simon Fraser University was told to remove her hijab. Last year, a woman had her hijab pulled, and was punched and spat on in a grocery store in London, Ont. (That case has been complicated by a trial that has been suspended as the person charged, who required a Farsi translator at trial, was deemed not mentally fit enough to stand trial.)

We don't need more evidence-yet there's still denial by many white Canadians. Exercising privilege in this way has clear detrimental effects, argues Tim Wise, an anti-racism writer and activist. "That white Americans don't by and large see what people of colour see doesn't mean that white folks are horrible people, of course," he writes in an essay called "White Denial." "What it does suggest is a degree of isolation and provincialism that should lead us to think twice before pontificating about a subject that we simply don't have to know nearly as well as those who are the targets of it."

This is why "recognition of Muslims as part of the fabric of this country is so critical," argues Shirazi. Many Canadians have the luxury of not acknowledging racism, and they've done so to the extent that white denial has become its own narrative. Any attempt to ignore the problem-or treat its victims as "other"-undercuts any effort toward inclusion in the next 150 years.
This post has been updated to clarify details about a trial in London, Ont.

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Too many Canadians don't recognize the Islamophobia in their country - Macleans.ca

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Only six in 10 Canadians think Islamophobia is a problem in their country. For anyone concerned with combatting racism, this is alarming, particularly when coupled with the 38 per cent of respondents to Maclean's Canada Project survey, in partnership with Abacus Data, who somewhat or strongly disagree that it's an issue at all.

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Black people in Ontario spend more time in jail awaiting trial than white people, even when charged with the same type of crime, according to data recently released by the province.

Government officials admit it's yet another systemic barrier faced by minorities as they manoeuvre through the justice system, and say they are working to find solutions.

But legal advocates say Ontario's bail system has become one of the "most onerous in the country" and the province is simply offering a "colour-blind approach to a colour-coded problem."

"There is systemic anti-Black racism in that there are many in the legal system who are not trained, encouraged or directed to consider the systemic barriers facing African-Canadians when they call for a surety," said Anthony Morgan, who specializes in human rights law at Falconers LLP.
Read more:
A surety is a friend or family member who agrees to supervise the accused in the community and forfeit a specified sum of money if bail conditions are violated.

"If you look at the stats of socio-economic marginalization, African-Canadians are dramatically overrepresented in unemployment, underemployment and poverty rates," he said "So when you call on that same community to have to present a surety, there are barriers."

The data, which spans 2011 to 2016, includes more than 20 categories of crime, ranging from homicide to fraud to impaired driving. In the most recent data, from 2015-16, there were just over 6,000 cases involving Black people and more than 31,000 cases involving white people. Some of these people would have been in custody on more than one occasion.

In more than half the categories in the bail data, Black people were in jail, on average, longer than white people, although in a few cases not as long as other minority groups.

In two categories - weapons offences and serious violent crimes - Black people were in jail significantly longer awaiting trial than fellow white inmates, outstaying them by more than a month in the former category, and 45 days in the latter.

In a number of categories, such as theft and traffic offences, white people were held in remand longer. In a few categories, the difference between the two groups was an extra day or two in jail.

In some categories, such as impaired driving, those who identified as Southeast Asian were remanded for an average of 19 days, while white people stayed in jail for an average of seven. In the case of traffic infractions, those from West Asian/Arabic backgrounds waited in jail an average of 40 days, as opposed to Black people, who were held for 20 days.

The data, obtained first by Reuters through access to information requests, was provided to the Star by the Ministry of the Attorney General. Ontario asks inmates to identify their race when they are jailed.

In addition to statistics for Black and white inmates, the data also included information on members of the Asian, Hispanic, West Asian/Arab and Indigenous communities, and those who declined to identify their race.

Ministry officials "recognize that racialized communities face systemic barriers and we have been and will continue to tackle these issues," said spokesperson Andrew Rudyk.

"Bail is a critically important part of the criminal justice process," Rudyk said, adding that last December the province created the Bail Action Plan to "support vulnerable and low-risk accused - many of whom are Indigenous or racialized - who may have otherwise been denied bail because they lacked appropriate supports like housing or programming."

Anthony Morgan, a Toronto lawyer, says "the province's solutions (to problems in its bail system) don't go far enough, because they don't explicitly identify anti-Black racism as a problem within our justice system, within how decisions are made at every level."

The ministry is working to expand the existing bail verification and supervision program to help "facilitate the successful release on bail of low-risk accused pending trial," Rudyk said. It has also launched a new "bail beds" programs that "provides supervised housing for low-risk individuals in five Ontario communities, making duty counsel available at six correctional facilities across the province to allow for more effective bail hearings and developing a new, culturally responsive program to provide supports to Indigenous people going through the bail and remand process," he added.

The ministry has also appointed three prominent legal experts to provide "advice on modernizing Crown policies on bail," he said.

"This includes providing advice on the use of sureties and bail conditions which we know disproportionately impact vulnerable populations and racialized communities," said Rudyk. He says the ministry is also working with partners to provide training in diversity and unconscious bias to those who administer the justice system.

Cash bail was largely eliminated in the 1970s to make the bail process less burdensome on the poor. But some critics say Ontario's heavy reliance on a surety as a condition of bail has become just as taxing for poor and marginalized people.

"The province's solutions don't go far enough, because they don't explicitly identify anti-Black racism as a problem within our justice system, within how decisions are made at every level," said Morgan, who has worked at the African Canadian Legal Clinic. "Until we get there . . . no one-size-fits-all program is going to help adjust these very particular disparities affecting African-Canadians." he said.

A recent Supreme Court decision called Ontario's surety system one of the "most onerous forms of release" and noted a justice or judge should apply less onerous bail conditions unless the Crown can prove a need for tougher terms.

The ministry says the numbers, while up to date, "should not be considered to be a comprehensive representation of the remand population," as inmates self-identify, and the same individual may be admitted multiple times. Moreover, the court tracking system does not track racial identity, and therefore there is no data on rates or types of bail or conditions.

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Race matters when awaiting trial, data shows | Toronto Star

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Black people in Ontario spend more time in jail awaiting trial than white people, even when charged with the same type of crime, according to data recently released by the province. Government officials admit it's yet another systemic barrier faced by minorities as they manoeuvre through the justice system, and say they are working to find solutions.

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Despite years of growing criticism, Toronto police continue to disproportionately stop, question and document blacks - and to a lesser extent, people with "brown" skin - adding their personal details into a controversial database.

Proportionally, a new Star analysis of Toronto police data from 2008 to 2012 shows blacks here were stopped and documented to a higher degree than blacks who were stopped and frisked by New York City police under a policy there that has led to outrage, lawsuits and settlements.

Looking solely at young black male Toronto residents, aged 15 to 24, the Star found the number who were "carded" at least once between 2008 and 2012 - in the police patrol zone where they live - actually exceeds by a small margin the number of young black males, aged 15 to 24, who live in Toronto.

"Devastating" and "unacceptable" was how Alok Mukherjee, chair of the Toronto Police Services Board, described the lack of change in the Toronto contact card data and the comparison to the New York numbers.

"We've been saying ... we are different," said Mukherjee, who was presented with a summary of the Star findings. "We are world leaders. We get awards and recognition for all that we have done for diversity and human rights. And then you see that.

"There has been a focus on dealing with gun violence but it still raises the question about the justification of the legitimacy of potentially carding every single young black in the city," said Mukherjee. He is expected to deliver a blunt report at the next police board meeting.

Toronto police have been busy trying to get out in front of the growing criticism over contact cards - forms filled out by officers in encounters that are typically non-criminal - and are set to reveal an overhaul of the way they police the city. Police are poised to share major proposed changes to the way officers conduct these stops and how data is kept.

Between 2008 and 2012, police filled out 1.8 million contact cards, involving more than a million individuals, in stops that typically result in no arrest or charge. The data end up in a massive police database that currently has no purging requirements.

Officers search the database routinely following crimes and during stops. Police have cited cases where contact cards helped close homicide cases, and investigators value a database that makes connections among people, locations and times.

Police Chief Bill Blair has acknowledged that encounters that involve stopping, questioning and documenting people who might simply be going about their business do not always go well but, done properly, he considers them good policing.

He has also readily said racial bias is a reality in society, and policing, and may account for some of the differences.

In a police conference call interview this week with the Star, which obtained the data in a freedom-of-information request, Blair was not available. But senior brass, including deputy chiefs Peter Sloly and Mark Saunders, defended carding as a valuable tool.

But they also strongly signalled that change is underway.

"We're doing this 370,000 times (a year) on average," said Saunders. "And out of the 370,000 times I'm going to suggest that we do it well. And the focus and direction, hopefully, is how do we do it better."

Police are expected to unveil 31 recommendations from an internal review of all operations, including carding, as early as Oct. 7, the police board's next scheduled meeting.

Whatever police propose, Mukherjee - clearly frustrated by the lack of meaningful street-level changes since 2005, when he became chair and Blair became chief - said the board must hold police accountable.

"The chief may provide his explanation of this data but the numbers are what they are," he said. "The board has given a lot of latitude, I mean eight years of latitude, we do policy, we do a human rights charter, we do training. All those pieces are in place.

"So what's left? People holding people accountable to the expectations of bias-free, non-discriminatory policing with respect for human rights."

Similar frustrations were expressed to varying degree by other stakeholders the Star shared its analysis with, including Barbara Hall, chief commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, as well as academics, lawyers, youth, community workers and activists who have been attending police board meetings on the issue.

"The comparison between Toronto and New York is very graphic," said Hall, a former Toronto mayor, and she echoed the concerns of Mukherjee.

"It says there's something serious here that we need answers."

Critics say the stopping and questioning of citizens, also known as "street checks," has eroded trust of police in communities that are dealing with violence and may actually make some neighbourhoods less safe.

The new Star analysis shows:

In each of the city's 70-plus patrol zones, blacks - and to a lesser extent people with "brown" skin - remained more likely than white people to be subjected to police stops that result in no arrest or charges being laid. The likelihood increases for blacks in areas of the city that are predominantly white.

The proportion of cards for black people in Toronto is three times greater than blacks' share of Toronto's population. In New York, the proportion of blacks stopped and frisked is 2.3 times greater than blacks' share of that city's population.

Carding is up, despite criticisms and questions of the legality of some stops. From 2008 to 2012, the number of street checks conducted rose 23 per cent. In 2012, police filled out 397,713 contact cards, involving 302,719 individuals. Since 2005, the year Toronto experienced the "year of the gun," the number of cards has increased by 62 per cent.

More than half of the people documented between 2008 and 2012 lived in or near the patrol zone where they were stopped. That number increases in at-risk neighbourhoods, where incomes are lower and people less mobile.

With that in mind, from 2008 to 2012, the number of young black males, aged 15 to 24, who were documented at least once in the police patrol zone where they live exceeded the young black male population for all of Toronto.

It's important to note that for each group, each year, a number of young people enter this demographic, as 14-year-olds become 15, and, if carded, they contribute to a higher count, and this would make it entirely possible that the number exceeds the snapshot census population estimates. But as police continue to stop, question and document hundreds of thousands of people annually, it becomes increasingly possible that all black, and to a lesser extent brown, youth in certain parts of the city could become part of the contact card database.

Blacks were charged with serious violent offences at a rate higher than their baseline population. This has remained the case for more than a decade.

Police this week said carding has dropped 25 per cent from January to June of this year, a sign, perhaps, that officers are thinking harder about when to document. There has also been another drop over the summer, since police began issuing "receipts" to those they card, Sloly said.

It's not clear if the patterns of who police stop has changed as well.

Police say they are policing communities where violence occurs and act on intelligence in terms of who they target, and that this has contributed to declines in crime.

"The officers aren't going in with the purpose of identifying everything that's moving," said deputy chief Saunders, responding to the portion of the Star analysis that suggests police may have, over a number of years, documented every young man of colour in certain neighbourhoods.

"They're specific in who they're going to speaking to," said Saunders. "It's intelligence-led. So you're not ever going to have a unit commander say we need you to identify every single type of person. It is going to be based upon what criminal activities are happening in that neighbourhood."

While certainly there is no suggestion of a police policy or direction to document an entire demographic, police conceded that, statistically, it's "possible" that this has happened.

"It's just not arbitrary mass rounding up of any particular group of people from a geographic location or demographic circumstance," said Sloly. "Numerically you could probably get to that point in terms of total numbers.

"In reality it is impossible. Neighbourhood officers assigned to communities are simply not going about their business in that way."

Toronto Police Association Mike McCormack criticized the Star's use of census data comparisons, saying in a letter that the analysis is "flawed" and "distorted," and that "any comparison should be with the actual street population." That's who police "interact with and it is dramatically different from the census population."

The census was the only available benchmark, and the Star has used this analysis on four separate occasions, dating back to 2002.

What police, repeatedly, have shied away from addressing head on are the Star findings that in each of the city's patrol zones black people are more likely to be stopped and documented than whites, and that those likelihoods increase in more affluent, predominantly white areas.

The Star findings that blacks are treated differently are consistent with numerous academic studies and reports, including the 1995 Commission on Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal Justice System, which looked at policing, the courts and the correctional system.

The studies don't suggest overt racism is a main reason for the differences, though it may account for some of it. Implicit bias, where people act on biases they are unaware of, learned behaviour and the way systems are set up are other factors.

Regardless, the differences are there in study after study.

Toronto police have dismissed comparisons of carding to New York, but critics say what's been going in Toronto - stops that sometimes involve patdowns and searches of bags, and can seem arbitrary - is an unofficial version of "stop-and-frisk."

"It's a different legal system, with a different legal tradition, in a different country. We do not engage in 'stop and frisk,' " Toronto police spokesperson Mark Pugash told the Star in August, following a U.S. court ruling that found the New York police program to be unconstitutional and an indirect form of racial profiling.

"Stop-and-frisk" is primarily about getting guns off the street. Contact cards are used to make connections. But many say the net results of the two programs are the same.

"Carding is effectively the same thing as 'stopping and frisking' because the facts found in the case law and the anecdotal evidence is overwhelming that the vast majority of people who are carded also get searched to some degree," said Toronto criminal defence lawyer Reid Rusonik, who has cross-examined dozens of police witnesses in various cases about carding.

Facing legal pressure, New York police recently volunteered to begin purging personal details from "stop-and-frisks" that involved no arrest or charge - the vast majority.

In Toronto, one in 10 people carded between 2008 and 2012 was arrested and charged by Toronto police during that same time period.

Toronto police capture personal details in these stops. They document the location and reason for contact, such as "general investigation" and "traffic stop," and the names and personal details of others involved in the stop, including car passengers and pedestrians.

The practice is nothing new and many other police services have similar procedures. Police use the database to search for personal connections and possible witnesses and suspects following crimes and say it is an invaluable investigative tool.

Contact cards also count in performance reviews and supervisors expect their officers to conduct a certain level of checks each shift. Police insist there are no official quotas.

In Part 2 of this series, the Star examines the contact cards of individual officers in search of patterns and potential problems.

The quality of cards varies. While some are completely filled out, others are missing information, such as skin colour.

Knia Singh, a youth mentor, law student and community organizer, and his friend Chris Williams, an academic and community activist, have never been arrested or charged with a crime but, aware of the practice of carding, filed a freedom-of-information request for their contact cards. Both are black.

Singh received a dossier of more than 50 pages of data police have compiled on him, some of it stemming from traffic violations. Amongst the pages are data from eight contact cards, indicating that his personal details and officer observations - like rudeness to police or Knia's suggestion he'd been racially profiled - have become part of the massive police database.

Singh, 39, who is the current chair of the Caribana Arts Group, says he was surprised by how many times he'd been documented, and by the dismal quality of the information.

The contact cards list him as ranging from five-foot-nine to a lofty eight feet. One card listed him as being born in Jamaica. (He was born in Toronto.) Another describes his appearance as "Caribbean."

"There's varying information in this and it concerns me," said Singh, who shared his stop information with the Star. "First of all, I don't know why I'm being documented in this way. And second of all, things are inaccurate."

"I've never been arrested but yet I have a file this thick in a Toronto police database on me," he said. "It's an insult and it's dangerous."

Williams, also 39, got back a single hit from the contact card database, stemming from a police stop he recalls quite well. . In April 2010, police from the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS) unit boxed in his parked car after following him in a Toronto Community Housing property.

The police, said Williams, contended the reason for the interaction was an expired tag on his licence plate and argued that because it was after 5 p.m. on his birthday, he should have had the new tag in place.

Williams disagreed and no ticket was issued. But then came the questions, including a request for his phone number.

"I just want to get some of your information in case we need to do some sort of follow-up," Williams recalled one of the officers asking. They wanted all of his personal details, and made a physical description, noting he was "clean shaven." Looking at the data now, he said it feels like a description of a suspect.

He co-operated and is now part of the internal database.

Williams and Singh share feelings that carding creates a list of names and circumstances that can stigmatize blacks, regardless of where they live, but more so for young people living in at-risk neighbourhoods.

John Sewell, another former Toronto mayor and head of the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition, found the Star analysis of carding "discouraging."

"Here's been all this criticism, and they're doing more of it."

The Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy, a provincially funded program implemented by Blair following a spate of gun violence in 2005, involves targeted policing in crime hotspots. TAVIS officers have more contacts with the public, and spend more time in at-risk neighbourhoods. The unit has the highest black carding rate of any police unit.

Although TAVIS officers have more contacts with citizens, every patrol officer in every division in the city is expected to conduct "street checks" as part of their daily duties. Done in the right way and in the right circumstance, it's considered good policing.

Police have instituted a carding receipt program at the insistence of the police board and other watchdog groups, so that those people carded at least know they have been documented.

But, like board chair Mukherjee, Noa Mendelsohn Aviv of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association questioned whether there has been a meaningful police response to the carding issue. The receipts, says, Mendelsohn Aviv, are not a useful accountability tool.

"Have they done something? Yes. Is it a meaningful and helpful response? Not nearly enough."

Through a youth legal rights program run by the CCLA, Mendelson-Aviv said the group has heard from youth about their interactions with police. "What's being created is distrust, alienation, and really the opposite of the goals of community policing."

Police say they are aware of problems. The police board and other groups will be closely watching for what comes, but they also want answers and accountability for what has happened.

"I don't think that with this track record the board can just take something on faith and trust," said Mukherjee.
RELATED LINKS: Advanced Star analysis package Unacceptable pattern: Toronto Police Services Board chair Alok Mukherjee's blunt note-form response to a Toronto Star analysis of police contacts with citizens. Tale of two cities: An analysis by the African Canadian Legal Clinic of similarities and differences between New York's stop and frisk policy and Toronto police stopping and documenting of citizens.

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As criticism piles up, so do the police cards | The Star

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Despite years of growing criticism, Toronto police continue to disproportionately stop, question and document blacks - and to a lesser extent, people with "brown" skin - adding their personal details into a controversial database.