Calgary’s police chief confronts controversy over carding

It’s a controversial practice.

Calgary Police Chief Roger Chaffin spoke at Pacific Place Mall Monday night, at an event organized by Rocky Mountain Civil Liberties Association, to explain the Force’s policy on street check-ups and why they’re necessary.

He promised they were confronting the issue of racial profiling head on.

Chaffin said the backlash from carding in Toronto “raised the spectre” of bias in policing.

“We started to look at our own processes,” he said. “We stopped quickly and started looking. We started looking at our own data. Are we doing the right things here? Are we out of step, out of date? Is there something we could change or get better at?”

In 2015, CPS “checked up” on people 27,735 times — a decline of 40 per cent from five years earlier.

“It is never random. It is never arbitrary. There has to be a legitimate reason for that stop, that check, to gather information on suspicion of activity,” he said. “If there’s people that shouldn’t be there, if their activities are suspicious, we are going to go out there, stop those people, we’re going to ask them questions, and use that information to guide us down the road.”

Chaffin says the data they gather is often very meaningful for police in putting together operations.

Abena Boadi came to the meeting, to represent the city’s Ghanaian community.

“I know people who have and it’s also happened to a group of us, just girlfriends, just sitting around late at night,” Abena Boadi said.

Boadi said Chaffin appeased some of her concerns.

“I still don’t like the fact that it’s being done, but if it’s not used for targeting certain people then I can understand that,” she said. “But I want to make sure it’s done for all of Calgary, and not just specific sections.”

She says she felt better to hear Chaffin is taking concerns about racial profiling and the targeting of low income neighbourhoods to heart.

“Whereas he could have just easily brushed it away, he tried – he at least included himself in the issue of diversity,” she said.

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