Police street checks: Here is something everybody can do
Don’t like carding in Nova Scotia? You can print a petition, and collect signatures as you go about your day.
Don’t like carding in Nova Scotia? You can print a petition, and collect signatures as you go about your day.
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.
It’s high time that the racist practice of carding be stopped in Nova Scotia. Good for the NS NDP for thinking it through and reaching that conclusion. Shame on all the municipal and provincial politicians who continue to look the other way.
Now with a more appropriate headline, and a rectification! Recently 25 African Nova Scotian organizations called for an immediate halt of police street checks anywhere in the province. The Nova Scotia NDP continues to stop short of calling for such a moratorium.
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.
None of the provincial political parties is demonstrating the leadership necessary to stop carding in our province. Even the NDP is not endorsing the immediate moratorium on the racist practice that was requested by prominent members of the African Nova Scotian community.
Solidarity Halifax is asking Nova Scotians to join members of the Black community who want to see an immediate moratorium on the racist practice of carding in Halifax and all of Nova Scotia. Here is how it works.
A long interview with Robert Wright, one of the African Nova Scotians who earlier this year demanded that the practice of carding be suspended. We talked with Wright about why carding generates such anger among Black Nova Scotians, the over surveillance of Black communities by police, the white indifference to the issue, how anger at police better be directed at politicians, and why carding is ineffective. More than anything we talked about racism.
Six months after members of the Black community in Halifax requested a suspension of the practice of carding, as well as an investigation, the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission still has not hired the data expert it suggests is necessary. That expert is required to determine whether racial profiling explains why Black people in HRM are three times more likely to be stopped than white people, says the Commission. Meanwhile the racist practice of carding continues, and the deadline for completion of the investigation is a moving target.
Ever since we found out about anti-Black bias in Halifax police street check practices the police department and municipal politicians have tried to make the issue go away. The hiring of an “expert” to determine whether there even is any bias at all is just the latest shameful example.