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.
Some 80 people attended a powerful community meeting, and several hundreds marched through downtown Halifax this afternoon, calling for an immediate and unconditional ban on the racist practice of police street checks.
Robert Wright’s full response to the Wortley report, as delivered at this morning’s press conference at the Central library on Spring Garden Road. Robert Wright spoke on behalf of the African Nova Scotian Decade for People of African Descent Coalition (DPAD), one of the organizations that long ago demanded a moratorium on the racist practice of police street checks.
The CBC reports that the number of street checks by Halifax Regional Police has decreased over the last two years. However, that decrease has mostly benefited white people. The likelihood a member of a visible minority will be subjected to a street check has increased relative to a white person’s chances.
This morning the Halifax Board of Police Commissioners got a preview of a report and recommendations about police checks and race, and it’s all super secret. Not good, I say.
I went home mad after listening to Black Lucasville and Upper Hammonds Plains residents talk about racist police behaviour in my neck of the woods. Shame on the politicians who feign surprise and can’t come up with anything better than an analysis that will go on forever.
Reporter Robert “Broken Record” Devet went to the Board of Halifax Police Commissioners for an update on the police street check analysis. Here is his report.
I went to the community meeting in the Halifax North End, called by the Human Rights Commission, to talk about police street checks. The overall consensus: Halifax police behaviour is often racist, the practice of carding itself is racist, and the community is tired of having to tell white people this over and over without anything ever substantially changing for the better.
It took a while, but with the hiring of criminologist Dr Scot Wortley the analysis of Halifax carding data can finally begin. I went to the Board of Police Commissioners to get the details, and for a bonus finally got to ask Chief Blais why police collected race-based stats for ten years, but in all that time never looked at them.
The Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission has finally hired a data expert to analyse police check data within HRM. That was the bit of news delivered by Halifax Regional Police chief Jean Michel Blais at this Monday’s Halifax Board of Police Commissioners meeting. That’s eight months after a Freedom of Information request revealed that Black Haligonians are three times more likely to be subjected to police checks than white people. Eight months is way too slow.