TORONTO – The Ontario Privacy Commissioner says the law, which requires police services to collect race-based data, does not prevent them from using this information to evaluate and discipline individual officers.
The Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner’s Office issued a statement to clarify comments made by Toronto’s interim police chief last week after the service released new data showing that blacks and racists face disproportionate use. of force.
At the time, interim chief James Ramer said the data could not be used to investigate the actions of individual officials, as the Anti-Racism Act and the Privacy Commissioner require it to be anonymous.
Read more: Toronto police chief apologizes to black community for race-based data released
Ramer also said that there are processes, such as internal investigations and courts, to deal with the actions of individual officials and that the forces do not tolerate “outright racism”.
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In a statement, the commissioner’s office said it had not indicated that current laws prevented police from using the data to “inform the supervision, training and discipline of their officers”.
It says the laws are designed to “protect people’s personal information, not information that identifies a person in business, professional or official capacity.”
The report on race-based data, published last week, is being presented today at the Toronto Police Council.
Read more: Toronto police statistics show disproportionate use of force against blacks
The policy of the race-based data board was adopted in 2019, after the provincial government passed the Anti-Racism Act, which requires several public sectors to collect such information.
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At the time, the board said the data would not be used to identify specific employees or manage their performance, but to “identify trends that contribute to professional development and organizational change.”
Ramer confirmed today that the office of the Commissioner for Privacy has not provided advice on the rule restricting the use of race-based data to systemic issues.
But he said the analysis of force data was “built to comply with on-board policies and thus simply cannot be used for individual performance issues.”
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The interim chief apologized to blacks and racists in the city last week when statistics were released, saying the forces needed to do better.
Many advocates and community members said the report only confirms what blacks and racists have been saying for decades.
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Figures show that black people in the city faced a disproportionate amount of police use and use of force in 2020 and an employee is more likely to point a gun at them – whether perceived as armed or unarmed – than white people in the city. situation.
The report also shows that people in the Middle East have been overrepresented when it comes to the use and use of force, while people in Latin America and East and Southeast Asia have been less enforced than their representation in the population, but have seen more use of force when interacting with the police.
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There were also racial differences in the search for nudity, with locals, blacks and whites being searched disproportionately compared to the number of those arrested.
© 2022 The Canadian Press
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