Crimbrary

Vital Intelligence Gathering or Meddling?  Police Across Canada under Growing Pressure to Stop Carding People
"You’re a cop on patrol at 3 a.m. and you see someone walking down an alley. Is it OK to stop that person and ask for ID? What if everything checks out? Should you still make a record of that encounter?

For many police agencies the answer is yes — you never know when that record might come in handy in a future investigation.

But consider the case of Desmond Cole, a 33-year-old Toronto journalist who says he has been stopped, questioned or followed by police more than 50 times in Ontario. At what point, he asks, does intelligence gathering become meddling and intrusion? Is it fair that police have now accumulated, as Cole suspects, an internal database of his many alleged encounters when he did nothing wrong?"

Related video:  Ex-Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair Talks Carding on Metro Morning