Carding? Street check? Well-being check? Racial profiling? Who knows?

Matthew Green, Hamilton's lone black councillor is kicking up a fuss after being questioned by the police while waiting for a bus in the city's downtown. Mr. Green sees the exchange as an example of racial profiling or "carding". The police are claiming that it was just a regular "well-being check", a regular and necessary part of normal policing.
The police officer in question is being charged with "discreditable conduct" under the Police Services Act, for conducting an "arbitrary or unjustified" street check against Mr. Green. It is alleged that the questioning was aggressive (at least until Mr. Green mentioned that he was a city councillor), and that he felt "psychologically detained" by the exchange. The lawyer acting on behalf of the police officer points out that the officer was in his cruiser, some 8-12 metres away, and that he thought Mr. Green appeared suspicious, standing as he was in a puddle of mud near a judge and near a group home. Mr. Green counters that he was just checking emails and waiting for a bus.
There are clearly some issues of fact to be sorted out here. But all sides will be watching the case closely for its implications on the difference between a street check and a well-being check, and on how the new Ontario regulations on street checks (introduced earlier this year) are being implemented.
Between 11% and 14% of street checks in Hamilton are done on black people, a demographic which makes up just 3% of the population, proof, activists claim, that racial profiling is still rampant. Similar stats and similar claims are regularly quoted elsewhere too. But I always wonder, when I see such assertions, what are the relevant percentages for the numbers of people hanging around on street corners at 2 o'clock in the morning? Now, I'm not saying that black people are specifically disposed to al fresco inner city nocturnal assemblies - although they may well be (or not) for all my paltry experience of urban nightlife goes - and neither am I saying that all black people are criminals. But the police obviously tend to focus on times and places where experience tells them that crimes are often committed.
Don't get me wrong: the Hamilton incident occurred in late afternoon, not at 2 o'clock in the morning. But I've no reason to believe, perhaps in my naivety, that the Hamilton police officer would not also have challenged a white guy in the same situation.

UPDATE
Many months later, and two years after the actual incident, the police officer has been officially exonerated, and the judge has ruled that he was not guilty of discreditable conduct, that his actions were not arbitrary or racist, and that he acted correctly in the circumstances.