Follow-up On Access to Information Request Nov 30, 2007

Nov.30, 2007

Ms.K.Watts,
Coordinator,
Freedom of Information and
Protection of Privacy Unit,
Toronto Police Service,
40 College Street, fourth Floor,
Toronto M5G 2J3

Dear Ms.Watts,

Re: Access to Information request 051925.

On October 5 2005 your office received my Freedom of Information request, asking to see:

1. All Occurrence Reports relating to Dufferin Grove Park from 2002 to the present
2. All Arrest reports relating to arrests made in Dufferin Grove Park from 2002 to the present, with names and identifying details blanked out (paper version is fine)
3. All documented reports of citizen/police contacts in Dufferin Grove Park from 2002 to the present, names and identifying details blanked out.

I received 159 pages labeled 001 to 201 from your office, giving me partial access, with two exemptions:

1. any information concerning matters still before the courts
2. any records pertaining to youth (approx. 130 reports missing).

Now that two years have passed, I’m hoping your matters before the courts exemption is no longer an issue. Please send me all the arrest reports (arrests made in Dufferin Grove Park) from that same time period (Jan. 2002 until Sept. 26 2005).

Secondly, please clarify

1. how members of the public can request and access police records of incidents which involve youth.
2. At what point, or in what circumstances do young people who are stopped or arrested by police fall within the Young Offenders Act?

Since all possible identifiers, even including gender, were removed from the Occurrence Reports, it would not have been possible for any breach of privacy to occur in the case of youth. We will need those Occurrence Reports involving youth too, so that our analysis of police activity at Dufferin Grove Park during that period can be complete.

Beyond that, we are concerned about three incidents well known to park users, involving people who are not youth, which seem to have no report attached to them. That is, there are no reports on or near the dates when those events occurred:

1. May 11 2003 (incident of police stopping a black man to question him re car theft, resulting in a Fourteen Division investigation for possible racial profiling, also involving me)
2. Sept.5 2005 (police in the park with a drawn rifle, seen by many park users questioning black youth, one youth taken to the station and then let go)
3. Sept.25 2005 (police ticketed families having a campfire with marshmallows, this occurrence was then written up in the Star)

These missing reports make us concerned, that other reports might be missing as well. Can you give us a sense of how complete occurrence reports are supposed to be?

Thank you for giving this your attention,

Yours truly

Jutta Mason