A Peel Regional Police officer engaged in the racial profiling of a Black motorist in an example of a “systemic” problem within the service, a judge has ruled.
The case, which resulted in the unravelling of a firearms prosecution, adds to a list of similar incidents that demonstrate a “systemic and intractable problem” within the police service, Superior Court Justice Renu Mandhane said in a sharply worded ruling that excluded a rifle discovered in an unlawful search of a Jeep driven by a Black man.
Const. Anand Gandhi stopped the Jeep in Brampton on a Sunday afternoon in October 2023 after an automated licence plate reader on his cruiser detected that the owner of the Jeep was facing drug charges in Toronto and was under a licence suspension for medical and administrative reasons.
Gandhi correctly determined that he could impound the vehicle if the driver was the suspended owner.
Earlier the same day, Ghandi had stopped another suspended motorist, a female driver, and simply issued a ticket. But in the later stop, Gandhi arrested and handcuffed the “compliant” Black male owner of the Jeep, called for backup, ordered a baseless search of the vehicle and detained the driver for 90 minutes, Mandhane said in her April 29 judgment responding to the driver’s application under the Charter.
In her ruling, Mandhane accepted that Gandhi did not believe he was treating the Black male driver any differently because of race. However, he “was influenced by his unconscious racial biases” when deciding how to treat the driver, who was in his mid-30s at the time of the stop. {snip}
“I find that Officer Gandhi relied on information about the accused’s outstanding charges (of which he was presumed innocent) combined with stereotypes about Black men being more prone to criminality and more dangerous than other people, to justify his decision to arrest and detain the accused,” wrote Mandhane.
The officer “then relied on stereotypes about Black people being more prone to criminality to illegally search his Jeep,” said Mandhane, who previously served as Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission and headed up a lengthy inquiry into racial discrimination by the Toronto Police Service.
“Put differently, had the driver been, say, a White woman, I am confident that Officer Gandhi would not have exercised his discretion to handcuff and detain her in the back of his cruiser for over an hour for the sole purpose of writing up a summons,” Mandhane wrote.
As a result, the evidence of an unlicensed rifle found underneath a mat in the cargo area of the Jeep “must be excluded,” Mandhane concluded, “because systemic anti-Black racism in law enforcement undermines the administration of justice, the rule of law, and the broader social contract, and case law shows that racial profiling is a systemic and intractable problem within the Peel Regional Police Service.”
{snip}
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