Christie Blatchford National Post

Friday, November 01, 2002

TORONTO - Go figure: Young black men are literally dying many nights on Toronto's mean streets, more often than not the victims of other young black men toting guns, but the issue that most concerns the local black leadership -- the issue cast as a crisis -- is police racial profiling.

At a Queen's Park news conference here yesterday held by a coalition representing more than 30 black groups and agencies, there was no mention made in the original presentation of black-on-black crime or its horrific toll in this city, most vividly exemplified by the spate of gun violence last weekend that saw four young black men slain, allegedly at the hands of mostly black suspects.

Even a brief reference to the violence, contained in the written version of an open letter to Ontario Premier Ernie Eves, was excised when it was read aloud, as the opening salvo, by Margaret Parsons, executive director of the African Canadian Legal Clinic.

The press conference was but the latest fallout from a firestorm begun Oct. 19 when The Toronto Star presented on its front page its analysis of Toronto Police crime data -- mostly of drug arrests and traffic stops -- that the paper says shows that blacks are arrested more often by police and subjected to harsher treatment by the justice system.

In the days that followed, Toronto Chief Julian Fantino first disputed the findings, then appointed Charles Dubin, the former Ontario chief justice, to review the force's practices, a move that in turn prompted yesterday's press conference, where Mr. Dubin's assignment was characterized as a waste of time and money and his qualifications challenged.

When the issue of black crime was raised yesterday by reporters, who asked if black leaders also consider it a crisis and if they are equally outraged, it was dismissed out of hand or indirectly blamed, as was also the lack of co-operation from witnesses in the black community, on the police themselves.

"We're not here to talk about black-on-black violence," Ms. Parson snapped.

Later, referring to the shooting spree that also saw five young black people injured, she said, "What happened on the weekend is the result of them [the police and politicians] shutting down and failing to listen and to talk with our community on the solutions. I put the ball right back in their court."

Another speaker, Zanana Akande, the executive director of the Urban Alliance on Race Relations and a former member of the Bob Rae-led New Democratic Party government in Ontario, made the same link, suggesting that "We also believe that if there was less racial profiling, if all people were able to access the justice system and the police system and not feel fearful of them ... it may well be they might be more supportive and helpful to the police in some ways and give suggestions around the way this violence, in all communities, may be stopped."

The coalition was demanding Mr. Eves re-institute an independent police complaints body; and fund with other levels of government "a documentation project," headed by blacks, to "gather the stories and complaints" of profiling victims and implement the myriad recommendations made by earlier studies of racism within the police force. He has agreed to meet the group.

It was in February of 1989 that Chief Fantino, then a staff-inspector at 31 Division in the Jane-Finch corridor of housing projects in the north end of the city, released to a local race-relations committee the crime-by-race statistics he was asked to produce -- unaware that there was in the audience a reporter from, guess where, The Toronto Star.

These numbers showed that though just 6% of the Jane-Finch population was black, blacks accounted for 82% of robberies and muggings and about 50% of drug offences. Then Staff-Insp. Fantino was not oblivious to the role of root causes -- he also pointed to the poverty in the area; the high amount of subsidized housing; the huge percentage of single-parent families -- but in the furor over the first set of numbers, which he had been ordered to compile by a superior, he was virtually crucified by the Star for having done so.

In a Feb. 21, 1989, editorial headlined "End the stereotyping," the Star asked, "How useful -- or right -- is it for Metro Police to single out one racial group for statistical analysis?" The editorial was contemptuous of then Staff.-Insp. Fantino's explanation -- that he was never intending to make the numbers public, and would not have released them if he had known a Star reporter was in the room.

"No matter who is in the room," the Star smarmed, "race-based crime statistics are a bad idea."

Fast-forward to Oct. 19, when the same newspaper presented its own analysis "of how minorities are treated by police"-- conducted by a Star reporter and a database specialist and apparently pronounced sound by an unidentified independent consultant -- in the guise of public-service journalism.

It isn't clear, from what the newspaper has revealed about its analysis, whether it took into account factors that may not have appeared in the raw data, but which may be relevant. The Star, for instance, found that arrested black men were more often than white men held in custody for a bail hearing. But if a person is arrested on a drug offence while already on bail for another charge, the police have no discretion to release him without a court's OK. Interestingly, the Star analysis also found that while only about 8% of Toronto's population is black, blacks account for about 27% of arrests for violent crimes such as homicides, weapons offences, sex assaults and assaults -- numbers not so out of whack with those then Staff.-Insp. Fantino found all those years ago.

The reasonable person would probably agree on three things: That young black men, in particular, are stopped more often by the police in traffic stops; that young black men, in particular, are involved in a disproportionate amount of violent crime; and that there is a relationship of some sort there.

But as for what constitutes a crisis -- those who allegedly feel victimized versus those actually dead from gun violence -- I would have thought it was no contest.

-- Anonymous, November 02, 2002