Five days after the New Year’s Eve ball drop of a 300-plus page review of carding and police street checks in Ontario, Justice Michael Tulloch and his team met with reporters and the public to talk about the results and recommendations at a downtown Toronto hotel that is a brisk 10-minute walk away from the politics of Queen’s Park.What will come of Tulloch’s street check report is dependent upon political will and the majority provincial Progressive Conservative government, led by Premier Doug Ford.It was one of four, highly critical major reports into policing released within the past month, including a review of Thunder Bay Police Service by the Office of the Independent Police Review Director and an interim report by the Ontario Human Rights Commission in its ongoing inquiry into racial profiling and discrimination by the Toronto Police Service.The common thread to all of them is that none of the findings were news to Black and Indigenous communities in Toronto and the province.On Friday, before a conference room at the Chelsea Hotel packed with rights advocates, the public and police brass from several Ontario police services, Tulloch stressed the importance of police maintaining the trust of the communities they serve.“The police are the public, and the public are the police,” said Tulloch, referring to one of the guiding tenets of the Peel Principles, which he said helped guide him in his review.Read more:Police carding should be banned in Ontario, independent review saysAddress racial bias in policing to stop carding, advocates sayIn order to maintain safety, there must be community and police co-operation, said Tulloch, who said he was not sure before he began his review what constituted a legitimate street check.Tulloch, an Ontario Court of Appeal justice, and his team consulted with more than 2,200 people, including representatives from 34 police services, and received more than 100 written submissions.He soon learned the ...
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