Province to consult community groups
100 community groups will be surveyed about street checks
The Alberta government is launching a series of surveys that will ask around 100 community groups about police street checks, a practice slammed by activists for disproportionately targeting visible minorities.
The consultations will be used in the creation of provincial guidelines to standardize how police officers perform street checks, said Justice Minister Kathleen Ganley.
“Our hope is to get as many people who have been affected as possible. People are often reluctant to come forward and share their experiences,” she told reporters Thursday.
The move follows calls from activists to completely ban the practice — also known as carding — after data showed a disproportionate number of Indigenous women and black people were stopped by police.
Black Lives Matter spokesman Bashir Mohamed shed light on the controversy after obtaining five years of data about the Edmonton Police Service through a freedom of information request.
In June, he called the findings a “disturbing trend” — black Edmontonians were three to five times more likely to be stopped than white people, Indigenous people were four times more likely to be carded than whites, while Indigenous women were stopped nine times more than white women.
Ganley called the data “troubling” and soon after announced a provincial review.
“We think this (consultation) is well overdue,” Mohamed said Thursday, noting Black Lives Matter is among the groups that will participate.
“We, in principle, are against guidelines without enforcement,” he added. “There needs to be a way to ensure those guidelines are being followed.”
The province is soliciting feedback about “non-arrest, non-detention interactions in which the police ask for and receive personal information,” Ganley said.
“What we don’t want to stop is the ability for the police to interact with anyone who is not detained because that’s the basis of community policing.”
Respondents will have six weeks to complete the surveys once they are made available later this month. Questions will focus on police training, interactions and the collection of personal information.
The questionnaires — which will be on paper, in electronic form and include some in-person feedback — will be almost entirely qualitative in order to learn about “lived experiences,” Ganley said.
Alberta would be the second jurisdiction in Canada to create a standard guideline, she said. The other is Ontario. “We want to look at an Alberta-specific model.”
Mohamed said street checks lead police to collect and store personal information without cause.
“To be blunt it’s not about community policing, it’s about surveillance,” he said, explaining that he hopes guidelines will address these privacy concerns.
The Edmonton Police Service has said officers conducted fewer street checks after an internal review in 2015.
In July, the Edmonton Police Commission announced that a third-party review led by an outside consultant would examine the issue independently.
Ganley said it’s encouraging to see police agencies take action — “it really does demonstrate that they’re interested in ensuring that everyone feels that the police are there for them.”
The Alberta Association of Chiefs of Police (AACP) released a statement Thursday, voicing support for the government’s consultation plan while emphasizing the importance of street checks.
“Every Albertan should want to talk to us unless they have something to hide,” said association president and Medicine Hat Police Service Chief Andy McGrogan in an interview.
“If there is bias, then it should be dealt with,” he added. “But I don’t know of one person that has been street checked and come into the office and complained about being street checked.”