On a recent Friday morning, I was jolted awake by the sound of fists banging against the glass panels of my front door.
Startled, I leapt out of bed. I heard voices shouting from outside, identifying themselves as police and demanding that I answer my door. Without any time to get dressed, I wrapped my bed sheet around my lower body and approached the source of the noise. I could make out the silhouettes of two police officers and a hand reaching through my front mail slot, trying to peek inside.
I opened my front door and was met by two white women in Montréal police uniforms, with guns in their hip holsters. There was a squad car waiting outside with at least one more officer. The officers at my door informed me that I, or someone within my apartment, had called them. I had not called, and there was no one else in my apartment. I said this and explained that up until a moment ago I had been asleep. This was not what the officers wanted to hear, and I could see them becoming more agitated. They did not believe me.
KJIPUKTUK (Halifax) – I was recently contacted by several African Nova Scotian HRM employees, both male and female. They tell me that they continue to be discriminated against, passed over for promotions including positions of supervisors and managers, while white people on the job for a few months are promoted. They also say that if African Nova Scotians are given any sort of promotion the positions are of short duration.
These workers also say they have experienced racial slurs, anti-Black sexism based on gender orientation, divisiveness in hiring practices, violations of policies and procedures and they say that their complaints are not given due process and these situations continue without redress or resolution.
With an increase in racism in HRM and around the world, I believe it is most important for Halifax Regional Council to do a serious review of racism-related reported incidents in all departments within the Halifax Regional Municipality ASAP.
On CBC, Parliamentary reporter Aaron Wherry was out last week with a look at the legally-binding carbon reduction targets the Liberal Party platform promised in last fall’s federal election. The promise came after what Wherry adds up as nine national climate targets over the last 32 years—none of which the country actually met. So legislating the commitment “surely couldn’t hurt,” he writes, “even if it’s still going to take more than a law to ensure Canada does its fair share to combat climate change.”
While both reports call for a national carbon budget, Wherry points to the environmental groups’ call for sub-national budgets as a key difference.
“In a perfectly rational world, that might be the smart way to structure climate policy in a federation—with each province accepting its fair share of the national goal,” he notes. But “the Trudeau government consistently has side-stepped questions about regional differences and responsibility by focusing on national policy, like the federal carbon price. It’s hard to imagine the Liberals wanting to engage now in long and painful negotiations to set provincial carbon budgets.”
People walk on the words ‘defund the police’ that was painted in bright yellow letters in downtown Washington, D.C., on June 7, 2020. The death of unarmed Black man George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked worldwide protests against police brutality. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)
The police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis set off an explosion of protests around the world. The spark that lit the fire was the video of his slaying.
Some doubt that cameras are effective in curbing police violence, as the lead officer in this case proved — he knew he was being filmed by a bystander, but he kneeled on Floyd’s neck anyway for almost nine minutes. Yet the reaction to Floyd’s death shows that cameras can make police conduct more transparent and potentially accountable — depending on how they’re used.
Chantel Moore is shown in this undated photo posted on a GoFundMe memorial page. The 26-year-old Indigenous woman was shot dead by police in Edmundston, N.B. THE CANADIAN PRESS/GoFundMe
Research into body cameras points to the need for more than policy alone. To tackle the issue effectively, Parliament should amend the Criminal Code to set out rules about how and when police should use cameras.
Without rules being codified in federal law, police across Canada will use cameras inconsistently and unpredictably — hindering their potential to make police more accountable and to curb the use of excessive force.
Cautionary tales from earlier studies
Studies support the potential benefits of using body cameras, but debate continues over how to use them effectively.
Forces across Canada have conducted several pilot programs over the past decade, but only Calgary police have formally adopted cameras. Other forces encountered two common issues.
A member of the Vancouver Police Department wears a chest mounted camera as he oversees the takedown of a tent city in downtown Vancouver in October 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward
It is costly to equip officers with cameras and to store and manage the copious volume of data those recordings would generate. But equally crucial is the uncertainty over when and where police should be obliged to turn on their cameras, and what happens if they don’t.
Should police capture every encounter with civilians while on duty? Or only when questioning or detaining suspects? If they fail to do so, or make a judgment call not to record or to stop recording, do they violate a citizen’s rights to a fair trial under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms?
Trudeau’s proposal would help address the funding question, but leave considerable uncertainty around when to use body cams. To be effective, control over the use of body cameras must be taken out of the hands of individual officers, where it’s ripe for abuse. Police need to follow a uniform playbook, set out in law.
Less discretion, more consistency
Those laws can take one of two forms. States like Illinois require officers to record “at all times on duty.” This general approach would be onerous, resulting in too much data and effort to manage it.
South Carolina takes a better approach by mandating camera use in specific situations. Under their law, police must record when detaining suspects for impaired driving — from the moment a police car’s lights go on to the time a breath sample is taken.
An RCMP officer performs a breathalyzer test on a driver during a roadside check in Surrey, B.C., in September 2010. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
Federal law in Canada should mandate police camera use in three cases — any time police conduct an arrest or a detention of more than a brief duration, when they carry out a residential search and when they pull a person over for impaired driving.
Privacy concerns will arise in sensitive, intrusive situations. In those cases, police should be required to seek consent and not record anything sexually invasive.
There should also be laws to address what happens to the video that police record and when they fail to record when mandated. A failure could form the basis for a challenge under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, possibly resulting in a stay of prosecution.
Body-cams as a tool of justice
As recent events in the United States and Canada have made clear, body-cam use is no guarantee against police brutality.
A body camera is seen on a Los Angeles Police Department officer in January 2015. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
There may even be a danger that greater exposure to police violence will desensitize us to it. But as George Floyd’s death demonstrates, capturing police conduct on video can still lead to greater accountability.
Trudeau should be lauded for supporting body-cam use in Canada. Making it law would make cameras a tool of justice. Leaving it up to police would make them another weapon for potential abuse.
An Indigenous person in Canada is more than 10 times more likely to
have been shot and killed by a police officer in Canada since 2017 than a
white person in Canada.
A CTV News analysis reveals that of the 66 people shot and killed by
police in that timeframe for whom race or heritage could be identified,
25 were Indigenous.
That’s nearly 40 per cent of the total. Adjusted for population based
on 2016 census data, it means 1.5 out of every 100,000 Indigenous
Canadians have been shot and killed by police since 2017, versus 0.13
out of every 100,000 white Canadians.
On a recent Friday morning, I was jolted awake by the sound of fists banging against the glass panels of my front door.
