The Hamilton Spectator (Toronto Canada)
The city’s police association, smarting from a newspaper series alleging racial profiling, has served notice it plans to sue the Toronto Star for about $ 2 billion.
“We have served notice to the Star that we want an apology and retraction,” Tim Danson, a lawyer representing the Toronto Police Association, said yesterday.
The association is suing over articles that ran in the Toronto Star between Oct. 19 and 29, Danson said.
“The aforesaid articles contain numerous falsehoods, malicious innuendoes and untruthful allegations, all of which amount to a very serious libel,” Danson said in a letter delivered to the Star yesterday.
The newspaper plans to defend itself, said managing editor Mary Deanne Shears.
“We stand by our series,” she said yesterday evening. “The stories are accurate and we have no intention of issuing an apology.”
The police association claims the Star reports have done severe damage to the force’s reputation.
“The extreme nature of the defamation in the herein matter demands each of the 7,200 members of the police service are entitled to general damages in the amount of $ 300,000,” the letter states.
“I haven’t seen morale as low as it is as a result of this series,” Danson said.
There is no limit to the amount that can be claimed in a civil suit.
The allegations have not been proven in court and the Toronto Star has not had the opportunity to defend itself.
The newspaper obtained the police force’s arrest database, listing arrests from 1996 to early this year, through freedom of information legislation.
The Star series analysed police data and concluded that blacks charged with simple drug possession received harsher treatment than whites facing the same charge and that a disproportionate number of blacks were ticketed for offences that would come to light only after a traffic stop.
The series suggested the pattern could be consistent with racial profiling, in which law enforcement targets individuals of a certain race or ethnic background on the presumption that they are more likely to commit a crime.