So far Halifax Regional Police (HRP) and RCMP are not pursuing the implementation of many of the recommendations called for in the Wortley report, a Freedom of Information request reveals.
Over the summer the Halifax Coalition to Ban Street Checks has been out talking to people in Halifax about the practice of street checks. In a relatively short period of time, we collected close to 6000 signatures against the racist practice.
Delays in the Lionel Desmond enquiry are unacceptable and cruel. “Sources close to this writer state that these delays are largely due to a number of lawyers demanding more money per hour while the Desmond and Borden families are made to wait, thus adding more trauma and pain and suffering,” writes Raymond Sheppard..
Went to today’s Halifax Board of Police Commissioners meeting, and heard how a petition to ban street checks is growing by leaps and bounds. Also, how and when the carding database will be purged. And a group complains that street checks never ended, despite the moratorium.
Two Halifax residents are circulating a petition calling on the Halifax Regional Municipality and the provincial government to ban the racist practice of police checks.
An Ontario judge asked to review new street check regulations in Ontario similar to the ones Nova Scotia is contemplating, found that we’re better off just banning the racist practice.
PSA: There are no more studies needed. There is much work to be done to undo the layers of racism at play in the HPD. Banning street checks is only a start, but an absolutely necessary one. Let Minister Mark Furey know that we need to end the racist practice of street checks now.
I ask why it was journalists who revealed the racist bias of police street checks rather than the Board of Police Commissioners, whose job it is to oversee the Halifax police. Then I speculate on the answer. They’re worried that it will expose how powerless they really are.
Raymond Sheppard and others continue to press for a hate crime charge in the Nhlanhla Dlamini attack. They also want the court to consider the impact of such hate crimes on the broader African Nova Scotian community. It’s time for an inquiry into the mistreatment of African Nova Scotians by the criminal justice system, they say.
In Nova Scotia one of the major barriers for people with disabilities is simple paperwork, writes Warren (Gus) Reed of the James McGregor Stewart Society.