Saskatoon police chief Clive Weighill says street checks fundamental to policing

Saskatoon's police chief is defending the practice of officers stopping people not under investigation and asking for identification or information.

It's come under fire with allegations that police are, in fact, racially profiling people.

Clive Weighill categorically denied the charge.

"Some people don't look their ethnicity, so you're going to end up with a real skewed mess if you're trying to actually categorize who we're dealing with and who we're not," he said.

Weighill made the comments during a Board of Police Commissioners meeting Thursday. The topic dominated the agenda.

"The only way we would ever have to do that is by our observation. And if we go by just strictly observation, we're going to make a lot of mistakes because we can't tell if somebody's First Nation. We can't tell if they're Métis. We can't tell if they're South Asian or where they're from in Asia," Weighill said.

Weighill said the street checks are an absolutely fundamental tool for policing. Many calls to police involve members of the public who observe suspicious activity in their neighbourhood and call for help.

This could be someone in an alley by a garage, or groups drinking in a park.

Should crimes be reported in a specific area, officers are able to go back and review the street checks and possibly isolate suspects in the area at the time.

He said police average about four such checks a day.