Packed Hamilton forum demands end to police carding

A diversecrowd of more than 200 people crammed into Hamilton city hall Tuesday to call police to account for a tool known as carding, viewedby many to be unconstitutional and a violation of privacy.

They spoke straight tothe people who cando something about it, many of them angrily and passionately.

HPS has not been transparent about why this data is collected, or even where this data is going.- KermeishaWilliams, co-organizer, 'Black, Brown, Red Lives Matter' march

In the audience were the provincial Minister of Community Safety and Correctional ServicesYasirNaqvi, Hamilton Police Chief Glenn DeCaire, Deputy Chief Eric Girt and four members of the Hamilton Police's oversight board, including the chair,Coun. Lloyd Ferguson.

Though the province is looking at regulating street checks, commonly calledcarding, most speakers, like McMaster students Kayonne Christy and Kermeisha Williams,called for an outright end to the practice.

Carding,is an "invasive,dehumanizingand unconstitutional practice," Christy said Tuesday.

"To this day, the HPS has not been transparent about why this data is collected, or even where this data is going," Williams said.

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"Most of our community is not in favour of carding, and I hope, Minister, that you take this seriously and not try to water down the recommendations," said EvelynMyrie, a community leader and former executive director of the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion.

"We are tired of giving you our voices, believing in a system, and it fails us."

'A sign we've hit a crossroads'

Coun. Matthew Green called the meeting, saying he believes that carding is fundamentally unconstitutional.

"I fully recognize the pain and frustration felt by many of you here today," Green said."Because I share it with you."

He asked every law enforcement officer in the room, even plainclothes and off-duty, to raise their hands and identify themselves as the meeting began. But, he said, the community should not, in its anger,ignore this chance to have an important dialogue with the province and local police.

DeCairecalled the event "a very important conversation for the city of Hamilton" but did not commit to any changes to the practice until he hears more direction from the province and the police oversight board.

Coun. Terry Whitehead, who sits on the police services board, said the size and passion of the crowd should not be ignored.

"I think it's a sign that we've hit a crossroads," Whitehead said. "I think we heard comments that people are tired and they need a change in approach."

He said practices like carding can create a "distrust, an us-and-them."

Another member of the board, Madeleine Levy, said the issue has "come to a head."

The police "information-gathering and retention needs review," she said.

'We found out that was a lie'

The attention and focus on the carding issue comes more than 10 months after a downtown march in December 2014called for an end to cardingand the police database with information collected in noncriminal street stops.

Twoof theorganizers of that march, Christy and Williams, came to speak Tuesday.

Williams said the police responded to that march and said, in part, that they do not collect race-based data, meaning a breakdown of racial impact of the carding practice could not be done.

"However, recently we found out that that was a lie," Williams said. She referred to a police presentation from July that showed the racial breakdown of street checks anddemonstrated a disproportionate impacton black and indigenous individuals.

'Do I want to have my name in that database?'

One of the biggest questions came around what happens once an officer fills out the 65-plus fields on the street check form. Police have said the information is retained indefinitely in theirdatabase.

"Part of what ought to be collected and what ought to be demonstrable, is that if Hamilton collects data for criminal investigations and it's helping them, they should be able to demonstrate that to us," said Sean Hurley, a Crown Point resident and dataactivist.

"They should be able to show us that the data they're collecting is creating actionable intelligence that leads to arrests, convictions and the closing of cases," Hurley said. "But whenever they're asked about it, the best we get is stories."

And that's not good enough to justify it either from a privacy perspective or from the perspective of whether the tool is a good use of police time, Hurley said.

Ultimately, Hurley said, the question for thinking about justifying the data should be, "Do I want to have my name in that database?"

kelly.bennett@cbc.ca | @kellyrbennett