The traffic stop: authority, conduct and fairness

Between 19:00 and 01:40 on the Friday night, the officers on Port Ardent's B platoon made twenty-three traffic stops. Most lasted under ten minutes. One produced an arrest for impaired driving, one led to a warrant arrest, and the rest ended with tickets, warnings or no action at all. The stop that Reyes and Malhotra made on Harbour Road at 22:15, the speeding stop Coutu made on Kingsway at 00:47, and the check stop that caught an impaired driver at 23:10 each began with the same legal question: what gave the officer the power to stop the vehicle at all?

Desjardins treats the traffic stop as a meeting point of three things the class has studied separately: the law of detention, the communication skills that make encounters go well, and the fairness concerns that shape public trust. 'Every stop is a detention,' he says. 'The driver is not free to leave. That means the law applies from the moment the lights go on, and so does the driver's sense of whether you are treating them fairly.'

The legal authority to stop

In Ontario, section 216(1) of the Highway Traffic Act gives a police officer, in the lawful execution of their duties, the power to require the driver of a motor vehicle to stop. In R. v. Ladouceur in 1990, a majority of the Supreme Court of Canada held that random stops of vehicles under this kind of provision, even without any reason to suspect the driver, are a justified limit on the section 9 Charter right not to be arbitrarily detained, because of the importance of checking licences, insurance, the mechanical fitness of vehicles and sobriety. The Court had already upheld organized spot-check programs in R. v. Hufsky in 1988. Section 48 of the Highway Traffic Act adds specific authority for stops to check for alcohol and drug impairment, often called RIDE programs.

The power to stop has limits. Ladouceur and later cases make clear that the stop must be for a legitimate highway safety purpose. Police may not use the traffic stop power as a pretext to investigate unrelated crime without grounds. In R. v. Mellenthin in 1992, the Supreme Court held that a check stop could not be turned into a search of the vehicle for drugs without reasonable grounds. In R. v. Nolet in 2010, the Court held that a stop with a legitimate highway safety purpose is not made unlawful just because the officer also has a criminal investigative interest, but the officer cannot go further than the highway purpose allows without grounds.

Detention, rights and the driver

A driver stopped at the roadside is detained, so section 10 of the Charter applies: the driver must be told the reason for the stop promptly and, in most detentions, informed of the right to counsel. But in R. v. Orbanski and Elias in 2005, the Supreme Court held that the right to counsel can be limited during roadside screening, because the screening laws implicitly require drivers to cooperate at the roadside without first consulting a lawyer. Officers can ask about drinking and ask the driver to perform physical sobriety tests without giving the right to counsel first, but the answers and results can be used only to form grounds for a further demand, not as direct evidence of guilt at trial.

Officers may ask drivers for their licence, registration and proof of insurance, and drivers are legally required to produce them. Under section 33 of the Highway Traffic Act, a driver must surrender their licence on request, and under the Compulsory Automobile Insurance Act they must produce proof of insurance. Passengers are in a different position. Passengers are detained during the stop in the sense that they cannot reasonably leave, but they generally have no duty to identify themselves unless an officer has grounds to believe they have committed an offence, such as a seat belt offence that the law allows the officer to deal with.

Choosing the place and time

The officer controls where a stop happens more than any other part of it. A good location is one where the vehicles can get fully off the travelled road, where there is light, where other traffic can pass safely and where the driver will not be tempted to stop in a dangerous spot. On Kingsway, Coutu waited until the pickup had passed a curve and the entrance to a closed bank lot before turning on her lights. 'People stop wherever they are when the lights come on,' she says. 'If you light them up just before a bridge, they stop on the bridge.'

Officers also think about the time of the stop. A stop that can wait until a safer location is reached usually should. A stop on a highway at night carries the risk of a secondary collision, which is one of the leading causes of officer deaths on duty in both countries. Ontario's move-over law, in section 159 of the Highway Traffic Act, requires drivers to slow down and, where it is safe, move over a lane when passing a stopped emergency vehicle with its lights flashing.

Communication at the window

The first words at the window shape the rest of the stop. Desjardins teaches a structure many services use, which can be remembered as greeting, identity, reason and request: a polite greeting, the officer's name and service, the reason for the stop, and the request for documents. Research on procedural justice, introduced in earlier courses, has found that drivers who are told why they were stopped and treated with respect are more likely to see the stop as fair, even when they receive a ticket, and more likely to obey the law in future.

Coutu's opening words to Halloran, captured on her body-worn camera, were these: 'Good evening, I'm Constable Coutu with Port Ardent Police. I stopped you because my laser showed your speed at 81 kilometres an hour in a 50 zone. May I see your licence, ownership and insurance, please?' Kowalczyk plays the clip for the students and then plays a different clip, from another service's training library, where an officer begins with 'Do you know why I stopped you?' The second driver became defensive within seconds. 'Do not make the driver guess,' Kowalczyk says. 'Tell them.'

Officer safety principles

Traffic stops carry real risk, both from passing traffic and, less often, from occupants. Officer safety at traffic stops is covered in detail in other courses. The principles that matter here are planning and information: running the plate before the stop when possible, telling dispatch the location and the plate before making the stop, choosing the location, watching the occupants' hands and movements, and calling for backup before the stop when the information suggests a higher risk. The Canadian Police Information Centre can tell an officer before the stop whether the vehicle is stolen, whether the registered owner has a suspended licence or outstanding warrant, and whether there are cautions about the owner.

A records check also helps the officer decide how to approach a stop. In Canada, a result showing that the registered owner is suspended does not change the power to stop, because highway safety stops are already allowed, but it gives the officer a clear reason to confirm who is driving and to plan for a possible arrest.

Bias, data and fair stops

The fairness of traffic stops has been one of the most studied questions in policing. In Ontario, the Anti-Racism Act and data standards require some public sector organizations, including police services, to collect race-based data on certain interactions such as use of force, and several services have published stop and search data. Reviews by the Ontario Human Rights Commission, including its 2020 and 2023 reports on the Toronto Police Service, found that Black people were overrepresented in stops, searches, charges and uses of force compared with their share of the population.

Desjardins presents the data without softening it, and then turns to what officers can control. 'Base every stop on what the vehicle is doing, not on who is in it. Focus on the behaviours that injure people. Explain the reason at the start. Make the stop as short as the reason allows. Record the outcome honestly, including when you did nothing. And ask yourself, every so often, whether the people you stop for minor things look like the people you are not stopping.'

Ending the stop and recording it

How a stop ends matters as much as how it begins. The officer should explain the outcome, whether a ticket, a warning or no action, and explain what the driver can do next, such as paying, disputing or fixing an equipment problem. Officers then record the stop: time, location, reason, driver, vehicle, outcome and any search or force. Port Ardent officers record every stop in the computer-aided dispatch system, and the service reports stop data annually to its police service board. Coutu's record of the Halloran stop took two minutes and later became one of the most important pieces of the collision file.

When a driver is upset

Some drivers are angry, frightened or upset from the first moment of a stop. A driver may be late for work, worried about losing their licence, or carrying a history of bad experiences with police. Officers are trained to treat strong emotion as information rather than as a challenge. Lowering the voice, explaining the reason again, giving the driver a chance to speak and describing the next steps calmly often settle a stop that started badly. Malhotra's advice to Reyes is to let the driver finish before answering. 'Most people want to be heard more than they want to win. Let them say it, then explain what happens next.'

When a driver refuses to provide documents or to follow a lawful direction, the officer explains the legal requirement and the consequence of refusing, and gives the driver time to comply. If the driver still refuses, the officer may have grounds to arrest, for example under the limited arrest powers the Highway Traffic Act gives for some offences, such as a driver who fails to identify themselves when required. Calling a supervisor and slowing the stop down are usually better choices than escalating it, and body-worn camera recordings help courts and complaint reviewers see exactly what was said.