B.C. civil rights advocates pan report on policing: `Reforms simply don't work'
Civil rights advocates worry a B.C. legislature report into systemic racism in policing falls short of addressing the social inequalities among vulnerable members of the public.
The B.C. Civil Liberties Association, PACE Society, Pivot Legal Society and other community advocates held a news conference Friday to respond to the report and recommendations for restoring trust into policing.
Among the 11 proposals were that fractured police departments should be amalgamated on a regional basis and mayors should no longer be allowed to chair police boards. It also recommended police no longer be the first and only responders to people in mental health and addictions crisis and better standards must be created around how police respond to wellness checks.
However, many of the advocates feel shifting responsibility around won't address police conduct, and are calling for stronger measures such as the defunding and demilitarization of police.
The PACE Society supports divestment, defunding and demilitarization of police, a position that comes directly from its membership, which “overwhelmingly experience disrespectful, harmful and unhelpful police conduct,” said Kit, a spokesperson with PACE Society.
“Reforms simply just don't work. Costly technological solutions like CCTV or bodyworn cameras distract from the reality that policing is grounded in colonialism and racism and classism and misogyny and xenophobia and the list goes on,” they said during the news conference.
Garth Mullins, a spokesperson for the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, said the recommendations fall short of providing help to decriminalize drug possession to help users as B.C. continues to grapple with the opioid crisis that has killed thousands of citizens.
“There's been a whole polite vocabulary that has emerged about how to talk about us, and we even have a minister of addictions that cries on our behalf. Yet the deaths (from illegal toxic drug supply) still continue,” said Mullins. “And I worry that this report is going to do that with police. It's going to teach police how to look and act nicer, it's going to create a nicer, more well-appointed jail for drug use ... but we're not asking for a nicer jail, we're asking for no more of that, you know, to decriminalize people who are criminalized.”
B.C. is policed by 12 municipal police departments and 130 RCMP detachments.
Anna Cooper, a Pivot Legal Society lawyer, said the recommendations do not include specific commitments to giving priority to community responses and community safety, and she is worried there will be no real change.
“There's nothing there right now that gives us that real promise that coming out of this we're going to see something that isn't just different in name and that will actually prioritize the people that we work with and give them better access to a system that protects them,” said Cooper.
Meenakshi Mannoe, a criminalization and policing campaigner at Pivot Legal Society, said structural and systemic problems remain embedded in policing in B.C.
She said over the two years it took to propose policing reforms, lives have been lost to police violence.
This includes several Indigenous people killed by the police, like Jared Lowndes, killed by Campbell River RCMP in July, she said. Police said Lowndes stabbed a police dog and injured an officer during an attempt to arrest him on a warrant.
“Even while this committee's work was underway, there have been high-profile incidents of police handcuffing Black and Indigenous community members. Beyond reform, we are now calling on government to defund the police. Yet, the province still authorizes increased policing of land defenders on sovereign Wet'suwet'en territory, and reverses police budget decisions made by Vancouver city council,” she said.
“Government must recognize the crisis that police present and enact legislative changes ...”