Spike in Murders Has Some Toronto Cops Blaming Carding Reform

Toronto's murder rate has been steadily declining for the past decade, but a burst of violence last month—including a number of high-profile homicides and bloody shootouts—is making headlines. As of today, 38 shootings that have killed eight people, compared to this date last year when 23 shooting incidents resulting in two deaths.

This year's shootings—particularly the shootout that happened in Chinatown this past weekend that left two dead and three wounded—have taken the city by surprise. The last few years, while not totally peaceful, have been on the quieter end of the spectrum. Homicide in Toronto in the last five years have continued to drop to pre-2000 levels, with 2015 sitting at only 55, while Canada's national homicide rate hit its lowest since 1966.

The Toronto Police, plagued by recent scandals like the James Forcillo conviction and the string of police charges over the last week, are on the back foot. The association that represents the police force is even blaming the recent bloodshed on the scaling back of controversial policing tactics such as carding.

Mike McCormack, president of the Toronto Police Association (TPA), told VICE that he has been hearing from officers on the frontline that the rollback strategies such as carding has made police ineffective at their job. He argues that this is one of the reasons that new strings of violence are happening.

"I'm concerned that, what I'm hearing anecdotally from our members, is that there is a lack of intelligence from proactive policing in solving these crimes and preventing them," he said.

"I'm not talking about biased and arbitrary and random policing that people have defined carding as. I'm talking about legitimate, lawful, intelligence-led information gathering, which is something we do in policing that we're just not doing anymore."

Similar to New York City's infamous, stop-and-frisk program (which has been rolled back under its current mayor), carding—sometimes referred to the police as street checks—is the process of the police stopping individuals to document their identification and activity. Many critics called it a practice that infringed upon Charter rights and promoted racial profiling, and there has been no public data that shows its effectiveness in preventing crime.

Since last fall, the use of carding in Toronto has been suspended. Debate about the practice forced the hand of the provincial government, who put an end to it until police could reevaluate and find new ways to gather information from the public. While McCormack argues the practice is a key issue for the police's ability to prevent crime, not everybody agrees.

"To suggest it has to do with a change in their rules—that implies that the police control homicide. I don't think anybody in the world actually believes that," Anthony Doob, a criminology expert and professor at the University of Toronto, told VICE.

"For the police to say it has something to do with changing the rules of carding, what about 2005? What about any other year that has been high? These incidents don't track any known policy, they're purely erratic."

Doob explains that there could be a multitude of socioeconomic factors that can contribute to homicides, but notes that it's very difficult to narrow down what those are or they play off each other. He says that it's disingenuous to suggest that more aggressive policing tactics can prevent violence.

"Homicides are serious things. Whatever it is that we can do, and I don't know the answer to that, we should do," Doob added. "Sixty people being killed is 60 people who are dead, whose lives affected a large number of people. That doesn't mean we should go crazy when those deaths begin to climb. Jumping for quick solutions that have no basis in data seems to me to be sensational."

When asked by VICE whether changes in carding policy has had an impact on violence in the city, Mark Pugash, Direct of Toronto Police Corporate Communications, said that it's short-sighted to associate police initiatives with having a direct link to stopping crime, and would not comment directly on the issue of carding.

Echoing Doob, Pugash added that there are many factors at work when it comes to curbing violence and declined to make any speculations about whether gang activity in the city has had an impact on the change.

"People very often want simple answers to complicated issues. I resist the temptation to identify a single factor. One of things we've discovered over time is that this is not an issue for police alone," he said, adding that a focus on helping young people who have "gone off the track" get back on track is the police's main priority in addressing crime.

Recently, there have been criticisms of the bloated police budget amid a dipping crime rate. Critics have argued that the police force has not only gotten too large, but that the increased spending is contributing to the issue of over policing. There are also concerns about militarization through the acquisition of assault weapons and the hiring of new officers. Peter Sloly, deputy chief of the Toronto Police, recently backed some of these criticisms and faced blowback from the police force because of it.

When asked about the usefulness of a $1 billion police budget, Pugash said that the media has mischaracterized the spending and that a large portion of the money is being spent on salary increases for officers—not being pumped into more direct police initiatives. He also deflected blame for the increases, noting that the budget is negotiated by the TPA and city hall.

As with most numbers, it is perhaps best not to make any concrete conclusions with a small piece of data, such as a month's worth of shootings.

Back in 1991, Toronto had its worst year for homicides ever when 89 people were killed, followed up only by the 84 murders in 2007. 1991 is often seen as anomaly in the statistical data—a year gone bad due to a heap of gang violence.

Following the infamous 2005 Boxing Day shooting in which a 15-year-old bystander was accidentally killed by a gang-related hit during the "year of the gun," a term coined by the media due to the large number of gun homicides that year. This dialogue would continue for years whenever bursts of violence, such as the Eaton Centre shooting in 2012 orthe murders at Muzik Nightclub last year, happened in the city.

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