Delete non-convicts records from police biometric database: Ontario rights watchdog

Among more than 100 recommendations to address allegations of anti-Black racism within the Toronto Police service (TPS), the Ontario Human Rights Commission suggests that photographs, fingerprints, and other biometric information should be removed from the TPS database of if the charges that warranted the collection of the data does not lead to a conviction.

Street checks, for instance, went unregulated before the start of 2017 and were intended to capture information from those the police had reason to suspect were involved in criminal activity. Some police began collecting and storing information from citizens without believing they were involved in criminal activity, OHRC says.

Information stored includes the individual’s name, age, weight, height, and even the names of their friends. Black respondents in the OHRC survey were 3.5 times more likely to report being street checked than their white counterparts.

Black people were also overrepresented in lower level charges and were involved in more cases that resulted in charges being dropped. Overall, their cases were less likely to result in a conviction compared to those of their white counterparts.

These are examples of how Black residents of Toronto disproportionately get their biometric and other personal data stored in databases without ever being convicted of a crime. This, in turn, fuels anti-Black over-policing that can affect employment opportunities and increase the odds of being convicted of a crime later on.

The collection of suggestions is part of “From Impact to Action,” a report the commission released as next steps to their report based on a public inquiry into racial profiling and discrimination within the TPS, A Disparate Impact.

Dr. Scot Wortley, professor at the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto is “cautiously optimistic” that OHRC’s recommendations can combat systemic racism within policing. “Since the release of OHRC‘s interim report, A Disparate Impact, the TPS has enacted more meaningful reforms on important issues, including race-based data collection, than anytime during the previous three decades,” he notes.

Other countries are seeing different problems around regulating biometric data collection. NYPD added mugshots to facial recognition databases that are not legally eligible to be included. If an individual is cleared of wrongdoing for the incident that initially prompted the mugshot, it is supposed to be “sealed” and destroyed. Records that were supposed to be sealed still make their way into NYPD’s facial recognition databases.

Meanwhile in the UK, Police Minister Chris Philp has suggested police should search passport and immigration databases to identify shoplifters, but the Home Office also holds records on thousands of people which they have been legally obligated to delete for over a decade.

Article Topics

biometric data  |  biometric database  |  biometric identifiers  |  Canada  |  criminal ID  |  data privacy  |  facial recognition  |  Ontario  |  police  |  Toronto police