The search for criminal suspects is undoubtedly one of the most important and fraught police responsibilities. The Moka café investigation features several examples of useful police intelligence: specific descriptions of the suspect and the car he drove after allegedly committing the offence, assertions by police that the shooting was premeditated, witnesses, dates, times, photos, video.
Imagine that York Regional Police, armed with all this information, instructed its officers to arbitrarily stop, question and document men walking in the streets in an attempt to catch the suspect. That practice, now known as police carding, might make police very visible and seemingly active in public view, but it would be an illegal, wasteful, and foolish use of police resources. How shameful that Toronto’s police use similar high-profile shootings and gang activity to justify carding and the racist profiling of black residents.
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The café suspect may himself have ties to organized criminals. There have been a series of targeted shooting in Vaughan in the last year, many of which are allegedly related to members of an Italian mafia. And we now know that an
illegal gaming operation was being run in the café where the shooting occurred. I doubt York police, in an attempt to identify potential mafia members, have been stopping residents of Italian descent and demanding identification. Residents wouldn’t tolerate such hateful stereotyping, and neither would the media or public.