Toronto’s top cop spoke for the first time on the issue of carding Monday following the mayor’s announcement that he would seek to end the practice only one day earlier.
“We’re in the process of working with the (Toronto Police Services) board to find out what the best solutions are to keep the city safe,” Toronto police Chief Mark Saunders told CTV News late Monday afternoon.
“That’s always been my stance on (carding), and we’ll work together to figure out what we can do to make sure things go well.”
This is the first time Saunders has spoken on the controversial practice since Toronto Mayor John Tory announced Sunday that he would seek the “permanent cancellation” of the practice at the next meeting of Toronto Police Services Board.
Asked whether he was surprised by the mayor’s announcement, Saunders said his responsibility was to ‘community safety.’
“I wouldn’t say I’m surprised by anything,” he said.
“We’re going to sit down and work with the board and figure out what the best direction is going to be so that we can keep our city safe.”
Saunders previously described carding as a “valuable tool” to target street gangs in a sit-down interview with CP24 last month.
“If we do it right, the negativity will be reduced,” he told CP24’s Stephanie Smyth at the time.
In April, the Toronto Police Services Board amended its carding policy to prohibit officers from considering “race, place of origin, age, colour, ethnic origin, gender identity or gender expression” when deciding whether to stop someone for questioning and banned any carding quotas from being put in place by management.
At the time, Tory heralded the changes as an “important landmark in advancing bias-free policing” but on Sunday he admitted that there is “no real way to fix a practice that has come to be regarded as illegitimate, disrespectful and hurtful.”
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