The Alberta government has chosen not to renew a regulation that prohibits the practice of “carded” by police officers, but the province says that the practice is still prohibited under other laws.
The provincial regulation that applied the prohibition had to renew last summer, but a government letter to the Alberta Police Government Association and shared by the Edmonton Police Commission says that the province would not renew it.
Cardado refers to police officers who stop members of the public without reason and request identification.
The defenders have said that the practice is largely equivalent to the racial profile, since statistics throughout Canada have shown that people of color are more likely to be minute than white people. A request for freedom of information of 2016 made to the Police Service of Edmonton found that indigenous peoples had four times more likely to be carded.
The government letter says that the decision to let the regulation expire was based on annual reports presented by the police forces throughout the province, which are required under regulation, which “firmly indicated” that the officers trusted other laws when making stops.
Carding still forbidden: Minister’s Office
The Office of the Minister of Public Security, Mike Ellis, said in an email that the Government Police Law still permanently prohibits the practice of cardia.
“Without regulation, the police are still obliged by strict legal standards,” said Ellis press secretary Arthur Green. “Officers must have a legal reason to request information, and are trained to respect the rights of the Charter, including the right not to be arbitrarily detained or questioned.”
Alberta formally prohibited the practice of carding in 2021 and established new rules for other situations in which the officers ask the public to identify.
Although the Province’s Police Law also prohibits the practice of cardiac, it does not require that police services submit annual reports that detail the number of attempts that the officers made to collect information from the public members through other forms of stops, namely, the street controls.
Street controls are when officers stop members of the public and request information with specific reasons to do so.
The reports were required to be publicly available and intended to ensure that color people were not being disproportionately verified in the street.
The Calgary Police Service said in a statement that it has never been involved in Cardado or street checks and had not done so before the regulation was implemented.
Edmonton’s police service said it does not use the term “street check” and that its officers are dedicated to “official contact reports”, which a spokesman said that it is also a highly regulated practice.
“In addition, there are ongoing internal monitoring mechanisms to ensure that these interactions occur legally and are properly documented,” said a spokesman in an email.
‘Deeply disappointing’
Theitope Oriola, professor of Criminology at the University of Alberta who joined the then Minister of Justice, Kaycee Madu, at a press conference in 2020, when the prohibition was announced for the first time, said Thursday that the government’s decision not to renew the regulation was “deeply disappointing.”
He said that officers are not legal experts and “trust a clear and consistent policy to do their job.”
“I say that because even practicing lawyers do not know all federal or provincial statutes,” he said.
Oriola said that the initial regulation “was not perfect” and that the changes made in the Police Law of the year after the implementation of the prohibition were positive, but the regulation had its own benefits.
“It demonstrates an intriguing administrative deafness of tone,” he said on not renewing regulation.
Green said there are existing ways in which citizens can seek justice if they feel that the police have treated them unfairly.
“If someone feels that they have been unfairly treated, there are clear ways to generate concerns, even through local police commissions and independent supervision agencies,” Green said.
