Toronto's Vietnamese community welcomes a Superior Court decision about racial profiling and marijuana growing

Stan Josey:

Toronto's Vietnamese community welcomes a Superior Court decision that found police had used "racial profiling" to find a marijuana grow operation run by a Vietnamese Canadian.

"For some time our entire community has been under the microscope when it comes to illegal marijuana grow operations," said Kim Trinh, program co-coordinator with the Vietnamese Association of Toronto.

She was reacting to a decision by Justice Emile Kruzick last month to stay charges against a man of Vietnamese background who was arrested on Feb. 26, 2003, after police found 596 marijuana plants in his Orangeville-area home.

The judge ruled that the method an OPP officer used to target Van Trong Nguyen was a violation of an individual's right to safety and security under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In this case, the officer had searched land registry records in the area to find people of Vietnamese descent because some people from that ethnic community had been charged in past investigations of illegal grow operations.

Kruzick concluded that Nguyen's house had been targeted for investigation because of "a stereotypical assumption that because some grow operations have been run by East Asians, that anyone purchasing a new home who is Vietnamese must be conducting a grow operation."

Trinh said this decision should be a wake-up call for police who may target one particular ethnic community for particular types of criminal activity.

Of course, the fact that this Vietnamese man was involved in growing marijuana seems to be unimportant to Canada's Superior Court.

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