Demand grows for bodycams on B.C. RCMP
‘It’s a tool of accountability and transparency’ for both police and the public, says Green party MP
A day after thousands of people rallied in Vancouver against racism and police brutality, a petition has been launched renewing calls for B.C. Mounties to wear body cameras.
The Change.org petition, which collected more than 18,000 signatures Saturday, comes as B.C. Green MP Paul Manly is also sponsoring a petition to the federal government on behalf of a constituent to require RCMP officers to wear the cameras.
Manly, who represents the riding of Nanaimo-Ladysmith, said there are cases where people feel like they would be exonerated if an officer had been wearing a camera.
“Body cameras are not about changing police behaviour, as evidence has shown that it doesn’t really change police behaviour. But what it does is it provides a tool for accountability and transparency,” Manly said Saturday.
He noted there is a disproportionate number of Indigenous people and people of colour in Canadian prisons, which he called outrageous.
“It demonstrates that there is something seriously wrong with the way our justice system works with people of colour. The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Inquiry has asked for changes to policing and we need to heed those calls and make those changes. This has been going on for decades,” said Manly. “People are fed up and rightfully so.”
Another similar Change.org petition in Toronto had nearly 100,000 signatures.
On Friday afternoon, thousands of people packed Jack Poole Plaza in Vancouver to protest systemic racism and inequality. The rally was the second in Vancouver this week, and was part of a global movement to protest racism following the horrifying death of George Floyd, who died May 25 after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck.
Vancouver police spokeswoman Cost. Tania Visintin estimated the crowd size was between 5,000 and 10,000 people at its peak.
On Saturday, she said the overall protest was peaceful but toward the end there were “instigators who got involved with the protesters,” which resulted in two people being arrested for assault. They were released pending further investigation.
The petitions say cameras are a good way to improve police accountability, reduce violence and improve trust and co-operation with police, as well as provide more evidence to use in courtrooms.
A 2015-2016 report from B.C.’s police watchdog, the Independent Investigations Office, raised concerns that officers do not routinely wear body cameras. The report said IIO staff reviewed 71 investigations and found that footage from body cameras would have potentially assisted in resolving 93 per cent of the cases.
“While there is less documentation of racially-motivated police incidents in Canada, they occur all the time,” states the B.C. petition, started by Melanie Banman.
“These incidents may not be as extreme as what happened to George Floyd, but racist incidents have been increasing in Canada — now, we have the chance to prevent the increase of racist behaviours of on-duty officers.”
The latest police shooting of a B.C. woman, which happened Thursday in New Brunswick, has highlighted the disproportionate number of Indigenous people shot by police.
Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the B.C. Union of Indian Chiefs, said he was outraged that amid global action decrying police brutality, a wellness check for an Indigenous woman resulted in her death at the hands of police.
He said Chantel Moore’s name has been “added to the ever growing list of lives stolen by racism.”
Moore, an Indigenous mother of a five-year-old girl, had just moved to New Brunswick from Port Alberni a few months ago. She was shot to death during a wellness check. Police in Edmundston, N.B., said she was coming at them with a knife.
Police also said the officers were not wearing body cameras.
Manly said had they been wearing cameras then Moore would have had a voice in what happened.
“In some cases it will exonerate police officers and in other cases it will back up what people who have been victimized by police have to say. It’s a tool of accountability.”
Ellen Kim and Doris Chow started a form in early May to record incidents of anti-Asian racism because they saw these cases were growing in number and impact, but could be “invisible” since coughing or spitting on someone or yelling slurs wouldn’t be categorized by police as hate crimes.
They modelled their effort after the work of community groups in the United States that collect information on the location, timing and nature of incidents so they can advocate for bystander and bias training.
Over a three-week period, starting April 23, they received 128 reports, with 70 per cent being filed by women and 85 per cent East Asian respondents.
Reports came in from cities across Canada, with about 87 per cent from within B.C. The location of the cases broke down to 53 per cent on a public street or sidewalk, 17 per cent in a grocery store and 10 per cent on public transit. About one-quarter of them included a derogatory reference to China or Chinese people.
“The thing to see is that the incidents we are hearing about in the media and that people are talking about publicly are not isolated incidents,” Kim said.
They now have partnered with the Vancouver Asian Film Festival’s Elimin8hate campaign, which is supported by the Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice.
Their form records cases experienced by victims, but has also expanded to collect ones witnessed by bystanders. It is now in a period of measuring cases starting May 19, when COVID-19 shutdown restrictions were relaxed, to see what change in impact there will be with more people out in public rather than at home.
“It was important to us to look at the health of the community from a more holistic perspective, understanding what exactly is happening and who is being impacted, and recognizing that witnessing incidents of racism is also traumatic,” said Kim.
Kim added even though the form has been translated into several languages — including Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Vietnamese and Tagalog in an effort to bridge linguistic barriers that might hinder reporting — most cases have been filed in English.
“We’re seeing that this recording of cases is being done mostly by the English-speaking, Asian community, but there is also the other element of non-English speaking people in our community. How are they doing with what’s happening to them?
“We’re trying to do more targeted outreach to those communities. It feels like people who are English-speaking Asians are more willing to speak about their experiences.”