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When the Toronto Star launched its hysterical campaign against "racial profiling" last year, I expected city hall would roll over quickly. White Canada is a guilty place, and few public figures have the courage to challenge the claim that our society is infested with institutional racism. Julian Fantino proved me wrong. At public meetings held in the months following the Star's articles, the Toronto police chief stood up for his officers, displaying a titanium backbone in the process. And last week, at a public police services board presentation, he went on the offensive, bringing in a University of Toronto scholar whose independent review debunked the Star's report. "The key finding is: the Star articles are what we refer to as junk science," concluded a lawyer who appeared at the meeting. "It doesn't contribute anything to the public debate about important issues. They simply pour gasoline and throw a match on it." The fact that the Star's case against Toronto police is "junk science" is not news here at the Post. Our editorial board blasted many of the flaws in the Star's analysis soon after it was published. In particular, we argued it was meaningless to compare the treatment of blacks and whites arrested for drug possession without properly accounting for such race-neutral factors as previous convictions.
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