Criminal defense lawyers, including one who represented the man whose complaint launched the Ottawa Police Traffic Stop Race Data Collection Project, are pointing out a part of the report they find disturbing, beyond the initial headline stats.
The landmark study by York University researchers found that out of nearly 82,000 traffic stops, made between 2013 and 2015, drivers, perceived by officers to be Middle Eastern, were stopped in 12.3% of cases - 3.3 times higher than their overall driving population in the City. Black drivers were stopped 8.8% of the time - 2.3 times higher than their overall driving population.
The report lays out the following reasons for why traffic stops were made:
Those statistics grabbed headlines, but lawyers suggest there's another trend in the data that is just as, if not more, disconcerting.
Criminal defense counsel Michael Spratt told CFRA's Ottawa Now with Evan Solomon that the disproportionate number of racial minorities who were stopped, and then released with no charges or warnings, paints a more telling picture.
“I think the troubling fact here, relied upon by the police chief to justify his officers’ actions, that if you look at the distribution of people who are charged after these traffic stops, that those are equally distributed, which is actually a very problematic statement,” Spratt says. “That doesn’t suggest things are going well. That means you’re stopping a higher percentage of visible minorities, yet you’re not ticketing them more, which shows that there is no reason, no grounds for these stops. That is the question that needs to be answered next.”
It’s a position that’s also taken by criminal defense counsel Leo Russomanno. Russomanno represented Chad Aiken who, in 2005, made a complaint against the Ottawa Police Service that he was pulled over due to the colour of his skin. The case led to the race data collection project.
Russomanno tells CFRA’s Beyond the News with Brian Lilley the data does not suggest visible minorities are committing more offenses.
“I think there is a comment with respect to the fact that, ‘look, just because they’re stopping more racialized groups this just means they’re more involved in criminal activity,’” Russomanno says. “I think, when you look at the report here, that can clearly be refuted because there aren’t an increased number of criminal charges laid or even tickets. In fact, the racialized groups are more likely to have been let go from a traffic stop without even a warning, so it shows a complete absence of evidence.”
The report lays out the following data:
Where or when the traffic stops were recorded is not part of the study. The report also states police perceived the race of the driver before the stop was made in only 11.4% of cases analyzed.
Spratt tells Ottawa Now even if stops are made in neighbourhoods with a higher proportion of visible minorities, the report still shows charges are not being laid.
“Police officers aren’t out looking for crimes in our tony neighbourhoods,” he says. “They’re not arresting or stopping white middle class or upper-middle class kids in Rockcliffe and charging them for pot possession, but they are looking at these other communities, and even when they’re looking at these communities and pulling over visible minorities disproportionately, they’re not being charged because they’re doing nothing wrong.”
Spratt laid out further arguments on his blog.
The damning finding could not have been any plainer: “there was a greater propensity that [Indigenous, Black and Middle Eastern] racialized minority groups were traffic-stopped for nothing...”
That troubling finding should be cause for alarm. Stopping a disproportionate number of minorities for no reason is not proof that the Ottawa police force is not acting in a racist manner - exactly the opposite.
Spratt tells Ottawa Now while he found Police Chief Charles Bordeleau’s comments, that the report does not conclude racial profiling, “woefully out of touch,” he does give Bordeleau some credit for recognizing bias exists.