Vancouver Police Department denies that carding is on the rise

The Vancouver Police Department says street checks are not on the rise, two weeks after the police complaint commissioner expressed concern about the department's use of the practice.

The Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner, a provincial body that oversees complaints involving municipal police, in a report late last month cited "an increasing trend in complaint allegations involving the police practice of conducting street checks." The report, however, did not provide a total.

Street checks, or carding, can refer to stopping individuals to gather information without a reasonable suspicion of an offence. The issue has drawn significant attention in Ontario, where the provincial government announced regulations restricting carding in March after complaints were raised about privacy violations and police were accused of disproportionately targeting minorities.

Vancouver Police Chief Adam Palmer said he has not seen any numbers to validate the police complaint commissioner's claim.

"I've got no data to suggest that that is the case. I'd be happy to see data if someone is providing it," he told reporters outside a police board meeting Thursday.

A Vancouver Police Department spokesman said it conducted about 6,200 street checks last year – compared with 6,900 two years ago, and 7,300 three years ago.

Sergeant Brian Montague, the spokeman, said in an e-mail the street checks "capture information about individuals found involved in suspicious activity and believed involved in criminal activity."

Chief Palmer said he meets with his department's professional standards section every week but has not seen an increase in complaints involving street checks.

A spokesperson for the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner said it has observed an increase in such complaints, but is still working to pull the exact number from its files.

The commissioner's report said a complainant alleged Vancouver police detained him and his friends on private property. The report said officers searched them and looked them up in a police database. The complainant and his friends were then released.

The commissioner said the officers' actions approached misconduct, but did not cross the threshold.

But in reviewing the matter, the commissioner said he "recognized a trend in complaint allegations involving the police practice of conducting street checks which were similar in nature to this case."

The commissioner said the Vancouver Police Board, which governs the Vancouver police department, has not yet delivered on recommendations regarding the development of a street-check policy.

Chief Palmer said the department announced last year it would work on a street-check policy and a draft version could be released in the fall.

"These things, they take a while because you do have to consult with the community. It's one of those things that you'll never make everybody happy, but we do want to hear what people have to say and make it as fair as possible," he said.

Chief Palmer said the department has changed its policy regarding the mailing of sensitive materials, an issue that was also highlighted in the complaint commissioner's report.

The report said a recorded interview with an alleged victim of sexual assault was lost after a Vancouver police officer attempted to mail the DVD to another police agency. The alleged victim lived in Vancouver but said the assault occurred in another city, outside Vancouver police's jurisdiction.

The officer who sent the DVD was found to have not committed misconduct because shipping material through Canada Post as regular mail did not violate department policy.

Chief Palmer said the department has enacted a new policy and such material will, when possible, be securely transferred online.

When material has to be shipped through the mail or a courier, he said that material must now be encrypted.