Some city cops are routine law-breakers on searches

I’ve been appearing before the Toronto Police Services (TPS) board since 2005 asking for a strip-search policy that conforms to the Golden decision of the Supreme Court of Canada and that respects both the law and those arrested by Toronto police officers. The board has consistently refused to adopt a reasonable policy.

Here’s an edited version of what I told the board at its May 22 meeting:

Two big men are in a small room with a young boy. The two men tell the boy to take off all of his clothes. The boy is a bit shocked but does as he is told. “Now face us,” the men say. “Lift up your scrotum so we can see what you are hiding between your legs. Now turn around, bend over and separate your cheeks so we can see what you are hiding in your bum.” The men find nothing. After four or five minutes they tell the boy to put his clothes back on.

If Chief Blair were still on the Children’s Aid Society board he’d be thinking of laying child sexual abuse charges. But these were police officers who thought they had the legal right to do this to a 12-year-old boy.

They did not. Judge David Cole found this search offended the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and said, “There is now at least a decade-long history of Toronto Police Service strip searches sometimes being found to be unconstitutional… “

He continued: “I have concluded that in my judgment the record demonstrates that the abuse of Section 8 rights of the Charter by Toronto Police Service officers not following mandated procedures will likely continue, albeit rarely. Secondly, I have come to the conclusion that no other court-imposed remedy (except for a stay of proceedings) is capable of removing that prospectively prejudicial behaviour.“

Judge Cole is not the only judge to come to this conclusion that there is something dreadfully wrong with the way Toronto police officers strip search people. The TPS board is complicit in these wrongful searches since that board is responsible for the way police strip search people in this city.

Judge Cole didn’t have Toronto’s strip search policy before him but if he did he would have found that the policy doesn’t include the Golden requirement that no one should be naked during a strip search—like this 12 year old boy was—but clothing should be removed one article at a time and then replaced. As well, the Supreme Court said strip searching should happen “rarely” but Toronto officers strip search about 29,000 people a year: that is, about 60% of those arrested.

And what do police find when they do these strip searches? In 1% of cases (389), police find “evidence” (probably drugs.) In 11% of cases they say they find something that could lead to “injury/escape.” They say in another 22% of cases they find “other.” It is very difficult to believe that almost a third of those strip-searched are hiding something in underwear that wouldn’t be found if a pat-down search (not requiring removal of underwear) were done. The rest of the time—66% of the time—nothing was found.

Police know they will rarely be caught doing illegal strip searches since only a few people can afford to take the matter to court.

A strip search humiliates and demeans the person and the process is a threat and a punishment by police. It is disgusting to think police do this to people. You as TPS board members are complicit in this. You allow it to happen.

To reduce the numbers of strip searches, first require a pat down, Level 2, search. They did that to the 12-year-old boy and found something on him—his cell phone. There was no reason to believe he was hiding anything else. That should have been the end of it instead of the disgusting thing those two men did to that boy. And that would be the end of the matter for most of the others arrested.

Sadly, the TPS board received my deputation and simply carried on with the existing procedure.

John Sewell is a former ­­­mayor of Toronto.