An insidious file
Yesterday's Toronto Star placed its latest expose on the front page in blaring colour and headlines. "Blacks are three times more likely to be stopped than whites!" and went on to discuss the practice of carding and the recording of more blacks than white. However the Star has it wrong by not going deeper. In its file, that contains many stories on the same theme, not one is talking about the practice of "carding"
Carding is the method that police services use to gather and keep information about people they have stopped, on file. This story details the methods used and the database that abound where non-criminal information is kept.
Field Information Reports
Replaced MANIX as the repository for contact card data, and houses the same contact card details as MANIX. It also gives descriptions for the nature of police contact, such as general investigation, loitering and traffic stop. This data set captures details from 315,000 contact cards filled out on 242,000 individuals from late 2007 to end of 2008.
This information is gathered by officers on duty who come into contact with the public, make notes for whatever reason and the that info is moved to a database, FIR see above.
Flashback to the overthrow of the East german government years ago. What did the population do? They went to the HQ of the Stasi and ransacked the files. Every person in the Country was in a file that listed associates, traits and other information. Does anybody else see the comparison here?
The practice of anybody, and this case its the police, gathering and keeping information, without that information being able to be checked for veracity and context is odious, but even more odious is the practice itself. How can a free and civilised society condemn the Stasi and then condone the FIR being run by the Police in Toronto and even perhaps our local police?
When will the Star condemn the practice?
Carding is the method that police services use to gather and keep information about people they have stopped, on file. This story details the methods used and the database that abound where non-criminal information is kept.
Replaced MANIX as the repository for contact card data, and houses the same contact card details as MANIX. It also gives descriptions for the nature of police contact, such as general investigation, loitering and traffic stop. This data set captures details from 315,000 contact cards filled out on 242,000 individuals from late 2007 to end of 2008.
This information is gathered by officers on duty who come into contact with the public, make notes for whatever reason and the that info is moved to a database, FIR see above.
Flashback to the overthrow of the East german government years ago. What did the population do? They went to the HQ of the Stasi and ransacked the files. Every person in the Country was in a file that listed associates, traits and other information. Does anybody else see the comparison here?
The practice of anybody, and this case its the police, gathering and keeping information, without that information being able to be checked for veracity and context is odious, but even more odious is the practice itself. How can a free and civilised society condemn the Stasi and then condone the FIR being run by the Police in Toronto and even perhaps our local police?
When will the Star condemn the practice?
27 comments:
Way back when the Reform Party was in its petri dish state, Bob Spooner attended an exploratory meeting at The Lion's Club in Port Hope. Whatever elected position he mey have held at the time, if any, I cannot recall. All the ususal suspects were there -Ron Dabor, Al Mathews -you name it. Anyway, Spooner made the headline of the Port Hope Evening Guide (and won the hearts of Reformers everywhere) with, as I recall, "90% of crime in Canada caused by Jamaicans: Spooner"
I've stillgot it around here somewhere. I'll see if I can't dig it out. Meanwhile, in Port Hope to get elected you have to heve been born here and lived here all your life. In Cobourg, all you need apparently, is a conical white hat and a properly equipped shop for building crosses.
Interesting that the Toronto Star is the first to throw stones when crimes are not solved immediately and love to fuel speculation on the innocent. Now they want to take a major tool for police away because it is racist? I wonder why there would be more contact cards in the highest crime areas. The police doing their job maybe. Now twist that to be racist, the Star is the racist entity.
Here are some examples of local police doings:
New kid in town, stopped by police in Cobourg 3 times during his first week here. Reason: driving while black.
Here's another: 911 call made for a medical emergency. Police turn up with paramedics, enter residence, and arrest the subject, who is carted off to jail instead of the hospital to cope with an overdose without medical intervention. Crime: a violation of probation order.
Finally, 911 call made for medical emergency, at which fire personnel show up too. As the subject is being taken away on a stretcher to hosptial, the fire guy blocks the spouse's way to launch a harangue about a broken smoke detector. When told to back off for obvious reasons, the fire cop is still waiting at the residence when the spouse returns to continue the harrassment and threaten the person with a fine for non compliance. Never mind it was rented accommodation and it was the landlord's responsibility, the utter inappropriateness of the whole incident is appalling.
Having had a cop pull out his gun and aim it directly at me when I was strolling arm in arm with my partner down a Belleville street one night, all because he looked like someone the cops were chasing, then held in the cruiser for half an hour while it was determined he was not their target, I am not the most trusting when it comes to police.
If the cops had to obey the laws like the rest of us I might feel differently, but I have no confidence that is the case, and I am a white older female. If I was a young man of colour I suspect my feelings would go well past simple mistrust.
We are already living in a police state and it will only get worse.
What? WHAT????
Our cops and firefighters AREN'T heroes? Every last one of them ISN'T on the verge of The Order Of Canada -if not sainthood??? What fresh blasphemy is this? How dare this woman question the pure, untainted goodness of those who protect us (and never for a moment let us forget that they protect us -especially from Polish people weilding staplers). Lo, she be made to stand on a bridge and wave a little flag even when no caskets pass! Teach the infidel a lesson! Our Cops Are Tops -no less than Christie Blatchford says so! My God, how can anyone stoop to defame an RCMP who dies in Haiti doing something few of us would ever do (whatever it was) under a punishing sun, day in day out when the Canadian winter beckons.
Be still, woman before Julian Fantino gets your number and decides to "take you out" -and not in the romantic sense either.
After that post Merk you had better take your own cards down to the station, they don't have enough of their own to fill out your file!
It's kind of like when Tiger Woods first started showing up at golf tournaments - it was so jarring, so out of place, so, so wrong, to see that black face amongst all the pink fleshed pudgy contestants, that some folks never got over it.
If you are different, in any way, from the steroetype of where you belong and why, there will be increased suspicion and scrutiny.
I hardly think reporting it makes the Star racist. We need to get police practices out in the open so WE can do some scrutinizing.
Also, it was good to be reminded of Spooner's Jamaican comment, I remember that now. One could suggest he was predisposed to take a negative view of our Park visitors years later. That Muffley fellow has a long memory.
Power to the People, and all that. The print media may be dying, but this new Star series proves it still has something important to tell us.
Oh yes, the Merk is a Merked Man unless he plays his cards right. PRZT!
In this wonderful democrazy of Canada, I personally experienced the interception and witholding of my mail by the Security Service of the RCMP.
It didn't stop there. The powers went to my employer and landlord resulting in my being dismissed from my job and evicted from my flat. After a year of 'dirty tricks' I was subjected to an arson attack.
Much it came out in the Royal McDonald Commission of Inquiry into Certain Actions of the RCMP. (Earned myself a full chapter, plus mention in two others)
Then I go do work in the Warsaw Pact countries, and encounter the likes of Stasi, SBB, Securitate, etc. The real ones, not the one's that Ben Burd fantasizes in his inaccurate hyperbole.
By all means, be vigilant about carding, however, I've had a comparitive experience that makes me a bit more saguine about such matters here in Canadada.
"We are already living in a police state and it will only get worse."
Whenever I read assertions like this, I think to myself that the person making the statement hasn't been around much of the world to know what a real police state is.
Merklin obviously has nothing to fear. He has his parents living upstairs.
Two people who were working nights at Bruce and Ricks have Chris Garrett to thank.
Maybe not, Wally, but neither does that person have to break their leg to know how painful that must be.
Enlighten me, Anonymous. How is it know that "two people working nights at Bruce and Ricks(sic) have Chris Garrett to thank"? Thank for what? For getting them their night jobs at Bruce and Rick's? I don't understand.
Being in the know as you seem to be, maybe you can tell me too why sharpshooters were positioned atop Cobourg buildings along King Street during Garrett's funeral procession. What was that all about?
(And, by the way, if your idea of the epitome of wit tops out at the parents-upstairs-level, well, go for it. But be prepared for getting back a lot better than you seem capable of handing out.)
"neither does that person have to break their leg to know how painful that must be."
Oh but they do have to break it to KNOW it. Otherwise the experience is virtual, not visceral. It is a matter of depth of knowledge, deep or shallow.
Careful you don't go over your head.
"...be prepared for getting back a lot better than you seem capable of handing out."
WOW! How lucky you are to be able to announce beforehand that you will bully up on a commentator. Sheeesh, if I did that the whole peanut gallery, including Ben, would howl. Go for it Merk!
Funny that Wally thinks the rest of us have to experience something to really understand it, yet he clearly believes that he has special knowledge about all sorts of things he hasn't experienced, with women's issues being top of the list.
And while we're at at, Wally, we're sick of hearing about your ancient European adventures. Get a new record, that one is worn out.
The fact that you have no idea of the reference to Bruce & Ricks in connection to the Garrett murder says it all.
"Wally, we're sick of hearing about your ancient European adventures. Get a new record, that one is worn out."
The chief whiners about this subject are progressives and lefties, largely because it takes the wind out of their bloated sails when they go on a hyperbolic binge asserting that things in the West are bad.
Ben made the reference to Stasi, the secret police of East Germany. The context in which he asserted it indicated to me that he had little if any direct experience of the Stasi. I did. If you don't like the sound of that experience, whine a little louder, O ye of no record at all.
Merkley ain't alone AnonyMouse. Step up to the plate and explain the connection between Bruce&Ricks & Garrett? Show us your intelligence.
"he clearly believes that he has special knowledge about all sorts of things he hasn't experienced, with women's issues being top of the list"
Implicit in the above sexist comment is the fact that its author believes men have no say whatsoever in any women's issues.
That's why I asked you to enlighten me. However, if it's some kind of parlour game we're playing here, like 20 Questions, I'm game. Care to explain the rules so we can all participate?
So I wasn't tortured by the Stasi neither was anybody in this debate. The Stasi amassed files about individuals, so does the Toronto Police, Just because the Toronto Police don't torture doesn't excuse their info collection as any less deplorable then the Stasi's practice. The point to be remembered is that the East germans, by ransacking their files condemned the practice, when will the Toronto Star do the same?
No one claimed torture. There is very very little equivalence between the East German Stasi with the weight of a totalitarian state behind them and the Toronto police with the weight of a democratic municipality, province and federal govt behind it.
The nature of the files that the Stasi kept, the methods by which the Stasi accumulated those files, and the uses to which those files were applied, are the devil in the details that discredit the ludicrous equivalent that Ben makes with the Toronto Police.
Of course, lefties and progressives like to bloat their assertions to make equivalencies where there are none; however, I would venture that East European civilians find the contention that the Toronto police are just like the Stasi to be as ludicrous as asserting that Israel is an apartheid state.
You brought up a valid issue Ben that stands on its own merits. To bloat it will such gross exaggeration does a disservice to the issue, as much as all the dime-a-dozen hype about global warming does a disservice now that it has been revealed that a lot of climate stats are without merit.
ALERT: THIS POST IS ON TOPIC.
Here`s an interesting quote from a commenter on another blog:
`What most people don`t relize is that even a police state doesn`t affect most people. You`re not going to be in a concentration camp unless you protest effectively``.
That remark made sense to me and I think it might explain why so many law-abiding-type-good-citizens fail to get excited about abuse of police power. It`s never happened to them, and unless one of their kids acts up and gets in trouble, or a family member develops a mental illness and gets in trouble, they may never experience it.
Certainly they don`t expect to experience it, and it`s far easier to just pretend it doesn`t exist, or turn a blind eye because `those people deserve it``.
That leaves the police and goons like top cop Fantino to do whatever they like. We should be very concerned about police, government and private entities like corporations and even political parties assembling files on citizens that range from simple index cards to data bases that include our financial and medical histories to our DNA, which is never destroyed even if it was collected in a non criminal context.
It`s the thin edge of the wedge, baby, and we should be paying attention.
Wally I will type slowly, When the Stasi collects information and hides it away from the public it is a bad practice, when the Toronto police does the same thing it is also bad and is equivalent behaviour, IN THAT RESPECT to the Stasi. It was you who stretched the equivalency to compare forces to forces not practice to practice. Of course the Toronto Police is not the Stasi just one of their practices is the same practice that the Stasi used. And it is deplorable!
I would claim that my police file (several forces here and abroad) is thicker than anyone else's on this forum. I have also experienced surveillance, interference and other associated police practices here and abroad.
If I follow Deb's reasoning, I should be upset as all hell. Well, I'm not, largely because I deliberately walked into another [foreign] state of mind that gave me an alternative perspective about practices here.
While that specific practice may be the same, the context of that practice is far more significant. That context signifies to most people in Canada who yawn at the practice.
The use of 'Stasi' was a rally call, to wake people up, to get them concerned about a particular practice. It will fail because people over the years are all too well aware of the use of ludicrous exaggeration to get them off their obese butts. People have become innured to such exaggerations -- they have become as impotent as cliches. Get fresh. Get real.
We live in a culture of constant hyperbole and exaggeration, that individuals feel a need to escalate the hype to get action.
"What most people don`t relize is that even a police state doesn`t affect most people"
The individual who made that assertion was likely not a resident of a police state. The years I spent going in and out of police states, real ones, taught me that "most people" living there are affected each and every day.
Concerning the Stasi, almost every citizen of East Gesrmany was affected -- I witnessed it first hand.
I would suggest reading, at a minimum, lots of dissident literature from inhabitants of such a state; it would have a curative power and prevent the misguided from forwarding ignorance to others
OK Wally, your file is thicker than anybody else's and you know everything about everything in Hungary. Feel better now?
You are also the king of hyperbole and exaggeration on this blog, not to mention self aggrandizement.
Enjoy your day.
The stink of envy, resentment and spite in AnonyMouse's comment. I couldn't care less about what any spineless AnonyMouse has to say. I own up to my postings, whereas you hidey-hole.
Keeler knows everything about Hungary? I've read through all of the comments on this subject and I saw no reference to Hungary.
Are so many people so resentful of Keeler that they have to make up fantasy information to throw at him? That they are intellectually incapable to discredit his info?
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