RCMP responds to racism manifesto from Black Caucus
RCMP commissioner Brenda Lucki denied there was systemic racism, then reversed her stance. Eight parliamentarians call for sweeping change to policing across Canada
OTTAWA— Concerns about racism and policing are dominating the daily discourse on Parliament Hill. Calls for change keep coming, and the prime minister keeps insisting his government will act.
“We need to take concrete action right away,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded Thursday in the House of Commons, when pressed by NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh — who was ejected from proceedings a day earlier for calling a fellow MP racist — to make changes to address systemic racism in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
What those changes looks like could be informed by a sweeping manifesto for reform released this week by the eightmember Parliamentary Black Caucus, which was signed by most Liberal MPs and more than half of Trudeau’s own cabinet.
Here’s a closer look at some key issues raised in that document and what the RCMP says about them:
Use of force
The RCMP’s use of force has fuelled the movement against systemic racism that has swept across Canada.
One video that has been widely shared shows an RCMP truck striking an apparently inebriated man in Nunavut, while another shows officers in Fort McMurray wrestling a First Nations chief to the ground after his vehicle was pulled over for a licence plate check.
In New Brunswick, a police oversight agency from Quebec is investigating the fatal shooting of an Indigenous man by an RCMP officer last Friday — the second police shooting death of an Indigenous person in that province in the span of eight days. What the manifesto calls for: The document calls on Ottawa to “fundamentally” reform police and other security forces by focusing on “de-escalation techniques.”
It also calls for unspecified portions of police budgets — the RCMP spent $3.8 billion in 2018-19 — to be reallocated to social services and health experts “trained in nonviolent intervention.” What the RCMP says: Responding by email to questions from the Star this week, RCMP Cpl. Caroline Duval said police interventions often occur in “a highly-charged atmosphere” in which officers must make “split-second decisions.” She said RCMP officers respond to about 2.8 million calls every year and that “99.9 per cent” of them “are resolved naturally or with communication/de-escalation.”
Duval said RCMP officers are trained for these interactions based on the “Incident Management Intervention Model,” a teaching aid introduced in the second week at the police force’s academy for new officers.
This is the framework officers use “to assess and manage risk” in all encounters with the public and determine “an appropriate option to control the situation, based on their individual risk assessment,” Duval said.
Athree-hour online course on that subject has been mandatory for all officers since 2016, and is part of annual training on the decision-making framework, she said.
Race-based data When RCMP officers use force, how often is it with racialized people? We don’t know, because we don’t have that data, and many are saying now that we need it.
University of Toronto professor Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, an expert on race and policing, told the Star this week that without better data, “we’re having an uninformed and unintelligent conversation.” He added that a dearth of data allows police — as RCMP commissioner Brenda Lucki did before reversing her stance last week — to deny the influence of systemic racism. What the manifesto calls for: The Black parliamentarians called for the federal government to ensure police collect race-based data on their interactions with the public. They also want data on race from public-sector workplaces and the federally regulated private sector — with Statistics Canada serving to make sure this information is available to the public for study and analysis. What the RCMP says: The force does collect information about police interactions and requires officers to write reports when they use weapons or a service dog, and when they use physical force that injures themselves or someone else, Duval said.
They provide descriptions of these incidents, including where they happen, what weapons were present, and descriptions of a subject’s behaviour and the officer’s response, she said, but they don’t include the race of people the police interact with.
Duval said that’s because “the ethnicity of a subject is not a factor in a police officer’s risk assessment and decision-making process.”
Street checks Also known as “carding,” the practice that allowed officers to stop and record information of people on the street became controversial in recent years. The practice was restricted in Ontario in 2017, but the RCMP still uses it.
The Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, a federal agency charged with overseeing RCMP officer conduct, is currently studying the police force’s use of carding. CRCC spokesperson Kate McDerby told the Star the commission expects to submit its report on the practice to the RCMP this fall.
What the manifesto says: The Black caucus wants carding banned “immediately.” The group also called for a federal ban on racial profiling by police, and for Ottawa to work with provinces and territories to end the practice everywhere in Canada. It also wants an investigation into how the RCMP has shared information gleaned from street checks with other police services and government agencies. What the RCMP says: Duval said RCMP street checks “must not be random” and must conform with the agency’s principles for policing based on equality and non-discrimination. “The RCMP does not target any individual or group based on their racial, ethnic or religious background,” she said.
Duval added that information is provided voluntarily during a street check, and justified the practice by stating that police “need to know and understand the communities they serve. This involves officers talking to residents, visitors, business owners and others on a daily basis, and making notes about those interactions.”
She said this information also helps police identify suspects and witnesses of crimes.