Mayor contradicts chief on racism issue
Stewart says systemic racism in police department an issue, while Palmer feels the opposite is true
Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart has come out to state, unequivocally, that systemic racism remains an issue in the Vancouver Police Department, directly and immediately contradicting an assertion from the department’s chief.
The clashing statements from the respective heads of Vancouver’s civic government and police department come at a time of unprecedented public appetite for conversations about police reform and racism, as cities around the world have erupted in protest, and politicians are calling for change.
“Let me be clear: systemic racism exists in all of our institutions, and that includes within the Vancouver Police Department,” said Stewart, who also chairs the city’s police board.
Stewart’s statement, in an email sent to Postmedia hours after a column was published online quoting Vancouver Police Chief Adam Palmer, who had said that systemic racism is not an issue in the VPD or Canadian policing, and that such a suggestion was “offensive.”
Palmer, who is also the president of the Canadian Association of Police Chiefs, said while there may be officers within his department and other Canadian policing agencies with “racist views,” it’s not a systemic problem.
Asked about systemic racism — defined as racial prejudice embedded within an institution — Palmer pointed out that Vancouver police officers are rigorously screened, and undergo extensive training. The VPD also has a history of taking progressive positions on social issues, from supporting the opening of North America’s first sanctioned supervised drug consumption site almost 20 years ago, to joining current calls for a “safe supply” of drugs.
Vancouver police are subject also to several layers of oversight, Palmer said, including the Independent Investigations Office, the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner, and non-government organizations like the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.
Considering all those factors, Palmer said: “I’m not going to be one of these police leaders that’s saying that there’s systemic racism in the VPD, because I don’t buy it. Actually, I find it offensive to even suggest that.”
It is, to put it mildly, a contentious question.
In taking his position, Palmer must concern himself, among other things, with the morale of the more than 1,300 officers who serve under him, after what Deputy Chief Howard Chow described in a recent tweet as “a tough few weeks for police officers.”
Stewart, who must answer to all Vancouverites both police and civilians, has been vocal on his views on racism, past and present. Earlier this month, when the mayor held a press conference to call for a provincial review of policing, he started by acknowledging the “systemic inequality and racism” which was implemented, he said, “to enrich men who look like me and … persists to this day in all our institutions.”
In his June 11 news conference, Stewart asked the province to review several issues, including what he called “the practice of discriminatory street checks.” Last week, Stewart took that a step further, announcing he would introduce a motion seeking council’s support to ask the Vancouver Police Board to end street checks in the city.
Street checks — the practice of police stopping people in the street outside of an investigation and often collecting and keeping personal information — have been controversial for years, and are coming under greater scrutiny this month.
The B.C. Civil Liberties Association and Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs filed a complaint in 2018 with the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner, claiming street checks unfairly target people of colour.
Data obtained through a Freedom of Information request found that in 2017, Indigenous people accounted for more than 16 per cent of street checks despite making up only two per cent of Vancouver’s population, while Black people accounted for five per cent of checks despite making up only one per cent of the population.
In response to the BCCLA and UBCIC complaint, an independent consultant was hired to investigate the VPD’s practice of street checks, delivering a report to the Police Board in December, saying they could neither confirm nor deny police racism or bias.
But then, last Thursday, the BCCLA and UBCIC unveiled new information: they had learned that a draft version of the consultant’s report had included incidents of VPD officers making “racially inappropriate” comments in front of the researchers, but those allegations were removed before the final report’s release in December.
Stewart learned only Thursday about the deleted section in the draft report “pertaining to alleged racist conduct,” he said Friday.
“Immediately upon receiving this information, I requested all documents related to the drafting of the report, and after review, discovered new information I had not previously seen regarding this omitted paragraph and immediately expressed my concerns to provincial authorities,” Stewart said. “The language being reported is very troubling and we must find out how and why the researchers removed the paragraph from the report.”
Stewart did not specify which provincial authorities he had contacted.
The Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner said last week it had launched an investigation, at the VPD’s request, into the “allegations of racially insensitive and inappropriate comments about vulnerable and marginalized people made by two Vancouver police officers.”
In an emailed statement, Deputy Police Complaint Commissioner Andrea Spindler said the observations omitted from the final report were “concerning,” saying her office would “ensure that all investigative avenues are diligently canvassed and appropriate efforts are made to identify the members involved.”
However, Spindler noted, the VPD had informed her office that the independent consultant had “declined to provide evidence and have indicated that their field notes were destroyed at the conclusion of the project.”
More information could be coming soon. Stewart expects to hear from provincial authorities “in the coming days” about the allegations deleted from last year’s report, he said, “and will know then about how this will be proceeding.”