Some 30 protesters rallied at the Gottingen Street police station this afternoon, demanding an end to police brutality and anti-Black racism. The immediate reason for the rally was the violent arrest and pepper spraying of a Black man on Quinpool Road by Halifax police.
New police powers allow for impaired driving tests without a valid reason to believe that drivers are actually impaired, and that spells trouble for Black Nova Scotians, a lawyer says.
After so many meaningless apologies and promises by police chiefs and governments over the years it will take a lot more to regain the trust of African Nova Scotians than yet another apology, writes Raymond Sheppard. “It seems that the HRP to this day is a hotbed of racism, and there is a strong need to clean house.”
Press release: While DPAD understands the motivation for the Halifax Regional Police’s (HRP) proposed apology for the practice of street checks, we remain deeply concerned about how our community will continue to experience policing in the immediate aftermath.
Over and over Black people tell of racism in Nova Scotia, and then there are the stats, but still the message isn’t getting through. Historian Jill Campbell-Miller on the origin of this reluctance to accept that racism is for real, and how a knowledge of history can counteract this disbelief.
Street checks are banned in Nova Scotia, and Halifax Police is set to issue an apology. This is a good thing. But unfortunately you can’t ban racism, and Monday’s Board of Police Commissioners showed we have a long way to go.
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.
“I wrote this piece for the brown and black children who have to walk everyday in this world under a microscope that wasn’t created to get a better view, to understand, or to be seen, but to be defeated.”
A poem and an essay by Guyleigh Johnson.
Angela Bowden went to the NCA counter rally in Halifax this Saturday, and she has some questions for the police. “The facts are that while the soldiers of Odin and NCA take up as much space as they please, our sons cannot walk in a group larger than three without the police taking their threat to public safety serious enough to street check them,” she writes.
PSA: Robert Wright will speak on “The Politics of Police Street Checks in Halifax.” Wednesday, 26 June, 2019 at 7 pm at Spencer House, 5596 Morris Street, Halifax.