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Weekend Newsstand: September 12, 2015
Today in the news, the current police chief doesn't want his officers using body cameras to record informal interactions, parking rates might be going up on a street near you, and CAMH has the highest number of patients go missing of all Toronto hospitals.
Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders is against police officers in the city using their body cams to record “informal interactions” with the public, according to a letter he wrote the Toronto Police Services Board. As part of a pilot project, about 100 officers in the city are currently sporting body-worn cameras. However, they are to turn them on only in certain situations—when making arrests, responding to calls, or addressing crimes in progress—and former TPSB chair Alok Mukherjee, among others, is concerned that those stipulations leave out many of the police-public interactions that have led to scrutiny and mistrust of the police. The vast majority of instances of carding take place when the civilian is neither under arrest nor even suspected of committing a crime, for instance. Carding has been shown to be disproportionately directed at black and brown men in the city, and has come under fire as a practice that violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and for being, according to many critics, a form of racial profiling. Police chief Saunders argued in his letter to the board that if officers were to use their cameras during informal interactions it would “completely disrupt” the current trial, making it into “something very different and problematic.”
The Toronto Parking Authority has sent a report to city council recommending that hourly parking rates increase in various areas of the city. If it’s approved, rates might rise by as much as $1 in some areas (although the majority of areas affected, according to Ian Maher of the Parking Authority, will rise by 25 cents). From Bloor to Dundas and Bay to Spadina, the report recommends raising the parking rate from $3 per hour to $4. Free evening parking would also be ended on some streets.
The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health sees the most patients go missing of all Toronto hospitals—by a long shot. Between 2004 and 2014, just over 2,000 patients went missing from CAMH’s central downtown location, while a combined 2,371 patients went missing from every other hospital in the city. The reason for this is in the makeup of the facility, according to CAMH chief forensic psychiatrist Alexander Simpson. “First of all, we have the largest mental health facility by a long shot,” he told the Toronto Star. “We look after way more people with mental health problems than any other facility in the city.” The hospital’s central location also makes it easy for patients to access transit immediately after leaving the hospital.