Policing

The prevailing view among the diverse range of respondents is that they feel demeaned, oppressed, and marginalized by the police. Participants perceive that police often used their authority to violate, discriminate, interrupt, and abuse instead of to protect them. Our engagements reveal that Black people across Canada feel over-policed as offenders and under-policed as victims of crime, and that both of these phenomena are facilitated by prevalent stereotyping of Black people as aggressive, angry, and dangerous. There was frustration about the early negative contact Black children have with police. Black community members cited feeling that the police were unwilling to engage in open dialogue with them, understand their communities, or gain cultural knowledge. Likewise, the underrepresentation of Black people in police services was perceived to limit their cultural knowledge. One of the most common findings across engagements was that the police often initiate interactions with Black people without a clear reason. Across the country, participants shared stories of being stopped simply because they were Black. Black participants in predominantly white neighbourhoods shared stories of being “othered” by community members who used the police as a tool in this regard. Black participants in neighbourhoods with a high- percent-Black population shared that there was a heavy police presence within their communities. In either case, the engagement sessions revealed that Black people across Canada feel a strong negative police presence in their daily lives. For example:

“I once got pulled over and before the cop came to talk to me, he called for backup and 8 other cops showed up. They talked to me with their hands on their weapons, only for them to ask for ID and then let me go. They needed 8 cops with their hands on their weapons to do a traffic stop on a single Black male”. (Black male community member in Northwest Territories)

“Police should stop pulling me over when I'm walking and asking where I'm going when I'm walking home. Stop pulling me over when I'm sweaty after the gym.” (Black community member in British Columbia)

“Personally, I have dealt with racial profiling. For instance, I was driving a nice rental vehicle and was pulled over, and when I asked the officer what I had been pulled over for, it was for no apparent reason, and he let me go.” (Black community member in Ontario)

“There is inherent stereotyping and implicit bias against people who look like me or have my name, so I always need to prove myself and work to disprove the negative biases.” (Black community member in British Columbia)

“Depends on your geographical location in the city. Some places are heavily policed, and you're harassed by the police. You have a greater chance of falling into the criminal justice system.” (Community member in Québec).

“Police stereotype... I was coming from work, was stopped and was asked if I had taken drugs.” (Black community member, British Columbia)

“How can I walk down the street as a Black man and be myself every day, when I have to look over my shoulder for skulking white and Asian officers. I rarely ever see Black or coloured officers.” (Black male community member in British Columbia)

“I believe I grew up in the time of the most brutal police tactics. When TAV gang unit and carding was legal, both rightfully outlawed today. As an adolescent before I could process my thoughts and emotions through critical thinking skills, the police were just another gang uttering threats and committing assaults, whether or not you were arrested through the guise of carding, racial profiling, policing with unlawful tactics.” (Black community member in Ontario)

These experiences often stem from racial profiling and stop, question, and search practices across police services. It is troubling that instances of racial profiling persist despite being identified by the Standing Senate on Human Rights (2021a) and others as an example of systemic racism that “disproportionally targeted Black Canadians living in Ontario and subjected them to arbitrary detention by the police” (p.89). A community participant in British Columbia shared “I am scared to be arrested for doing nothing. Or worse, killed for no reason.” This perfectly summarizes the fear held by many Black people across Canada about being victims of police brutality tied to racial profiling. This fear is reasonable and supported by research. Black people are overrepresented in police use-of-force cases and are more likely to be fatally shot by the police in Canada than white people (Singh, 2020). Race remains a significant independent predictor of use of force and policing shooting deaths against Black people even after relevant factors are considered including civilian characteristics (age, gender, criminal history) and situational factors (community setting, living in a patrol zone with higher crime, civilian behaviour towards officers, mental illness, civilian impairment, the presence of a weapon) (OHRC, 2020, p. 7-8). In Toronto, the police lethal shooting rate was about 20 times higher for Black people than their white counterparts (OHRC, 2018). The Toronto Police Services lethal shooting rate of Black people (7.29 per million) was higher than the American police lethal shooting rate of Black civilians (6.99 per million) (OHRC, 2021). This finding challenges the assertion that systemic racism in policing is not “as bad as it is in the United States”, a sentiment frequently invoked to demonstrate Canada’s progressiveness and delegitimize the concerns of Black people in Canada and their allies about the state of law enforcement. Research demonstrates that officers who feel “threatened” are less likely to use alternative methods to de-escalate situations like containing subjects, increasing physical distance, dialogue, and disengagement, and are more likely to discharge their firearms (Parent, 2007). People are also more likely to perceive Black people as threatening (Eberhardt et al., 2004; James, 2018) and misidentify objects they are holding as threatening (Correll et al., 2011), this second finding is pronounced for Black men (Plant et al., 2011). These findings help validate the concerns of community participant’s claims about the differential likelihood of police to use force against Black people and highlights the need for robust cultural competency training to address explicit and implicit biases held by law enforcement, crisis intervention training to accurately identify individuals in distress, and anti-racist de-escalation training for police to reduce failures in accurately assessing situations involving Black people.

These findings about police brutality and errors in policing practice are particularly frightening when considered alongside the fact that some respondents shared that the police mistook them for suspects of crime. Some even shared that this happened when their physical characteristics did not match that of the suspects:

“Two years ago, we celebrated my brother's birthday. He's in his 30s. He's tall with nice locks and whatnot. He left the home. We were just all together. Family, nieces, nephews, whatnot. He just went maybe three or four blocks away to a little pub with his friends. As soon as he got there, there were like six police cars that pulled up. They stopped his way while driving. They pulled him out of the car and accused him of being somebody else. They said some random name and he's just like, ‘that's not my name, my name is... like Richard’, it was very English, you know what I mean? And they're like, ‘no, your name is’, it was like a not an English name. And he's just like, ‘no, you can see my ID, you can check my pockets’. They slammed him on the ground, they put his hands behind his head. We had just celebrated his birthday. His friends had to be like, ‘no, it's not this person you're saying…this is his name and please check his ID’. And the police were not taking what you say at face value. They had him in this situation for about 30 to 45 minutes until they're like, ‘Oh, we're sorry. We got the wrong person. Have a nice night. Goodbye’. That's traumatizing. And then, us hearing that story it’s like, ‘we were just celebrating you, we were just celebrating your birthday’. And this matter could have escalated into something that would be horrific.” (Black sister of an individual with lived experience with the justice system in Montréal)

“Look at what they did to 81-year-old Selwyn...you want to tell me they can't differentiate between a 40-year-old and an 81-year-old? Only when they are Black! These police officers are enabled by the system.Footnote 3” (Community member in British Columbia)

“When it comes to the famous, "you look like someone we're looking for." I could tell you as a Black man, I look like a whole bunch of brothers. I look like a lot of brothers. I can't tell you on how many occasions that I was stopped by the police because I look like a tall Black guy that's six foot five that happened to do a crime. And it's like, ‘are you such and such?’ ‘No.’ ‘Yes, you are’. Now I'm supposed to prove that I'm not someone that they’re looking for. And I have no means to prove it because I'm not that person. But now it's my word against the person in authority's word. And now I'm ‘lying’ because I'm saying I'm not such and such. In 2012, 2013, I was jumped by the police in Old Montreal.” (Black male community member in Québec)

This trend of misidentification by police not only impacts adults, it also impacts youth. A community member in Montréal shared:

“I think about one of my cousins who was a pre-teen. By no stretch of the imagination was he at a stage like teen or adult. He had gone to play with some friends, was on his way back home and the police picked him up and threw him in the back of a police car because apparently there was somebody who had gotten attacked or assaulted and he fit the description. And this is not a big pre-teen. They dropped him off at his house in the driveway in a police car. They never ran the doorbell. Just dropped him right home because they knew it [they made a mistake]. And they just dropped him off, for all neighbors to see. Kids experience for the first time his interaction with the police as being in back of the car. Then my aunt and my uncle had to call a police station because [my cousin] comes in the house and explains what happened and they never came to the door. And they treated their child like he was a grown man, you know. That stays with a child. They carry that with them. That stuck with me. Black kids don't get to be kids. And I don't know what the answer is.”

Significantly, this example illustrates how the treatment of Black children and youth by police is yet another way that Black people are denied their childhood. They are forced to grow up fast, take on responsibilities typically performed by adults, and have life experiences that no person should ever experience- but that children, especially, often lack the emotional tools to grapple with.

In addition to increasing police brutality and being overly involved in the lives of Black community members, policing practices such as racial profiling and carding serve as major contributors to the disproportionate representation of Black individuals within the Canadian justice system (Government of Ontario, 2018). These practices have especially harmful impacts on the overincarceration Black people when it comes to petty crime and trivial behaviour among youth (Owusu-Bempah & Jeffers, 2022). Discretion also plays an important role. Statistics on drug- related offences demonstrate alarming differences in enforcement, with much higher rates of being charged if you are Black or Indigenous, despite a lack of support for the idea that there are substantially different rates of drug use among racial groups in Canada (Owusu-Bempah & Luscombe, 2021). We can therefore reasonably connect these outcomes to heavier police presence in areas where the presence of Black community members is high (Owusu-Bempah & Jeffers, 2022) and to differential enforcement in interactions between Black people and the police, as compared to white people (Owusu-Bempah & Luscombe, 2021). The engagement sessions revealed many examples of Black people receiving overtly different treatment by police as compared to white people. They also recounted unnecessarily negative and extreme experiences with the police:

"Police appear intimidating especially when driving and when they stop me on the road. They usually never issue me a warning, it's always a straight ticket where some of my other friends of different races say they got away with a warning like driving over the posted limit by 10 to 15 km." (Black male community member in British Columbia)

“Myself and two other Black men were arrested after being assaulted because we stood out from the rest of the crowd and l, in their own words "were the only ones that they could identify as aggressors and connected." (Black male community member in British Columbia)

“Most, if not all, our interactions with the police were negative”. The police humiliate us for no reason. The police hate us. Police are always rude and judgmental. My family and I were arrested for jaywalking.” (Community member in Ontario)

“A family member (youth) was driven in a cop car over the bridge from one side to the other and the cop asked the kid if he wanted him to throw him over.” (Community member in Nova Scotia)

“He was been beaten by 10 police officers. He refused to file a complaint since he has recovered from the situation and does not wish to relive this trauma through the legal process. This person says they feel helpless in the face of police abuse.” (Community partner in Québec)

Differential enforcement is facilitated by the fact that police officers can charge people with offences that are highly discretionary and tend to be arbitrarily and differentially applied:

“Oftentimes we see that it's the same infraction that comes up over and over and over. And the police are using "entrave à la police", 129AE to harass people in certain neighborhoods. It's obstruction of justice, yeah. The police are empowered because they can just use a vague interaction where it's their word against the population. And if they don't like the way they were talked to, or if there was any kind of resistance, they use that infraction to give people a criminal record. And the one thing that I've noticed is that oftentimes the people who participate in the project that I run, they say they feel powerless because it happens so often that at some point you start to lose your will to fight against the system. And you know that if you say anything, even if you know your rights, that they can use that article against you. I think what's important is to take away these arbitrary powers that allow the police or other members of the institution to harass our people.” (Community partner in Québec)

As succinctly stated by a community member in Québec, there is an urgent need for police to: “Stop pulling over Black people and discriminating against us.”

Racial profiling, carding, and other forms of discrimination in policing have severe consequences and facilitate discrimination that persists throughout the justice system. Research shows that Black people are more likely to be criminally charged by the police than white people and people from other racialized groups (OHRC, 2020). Despite accounting for only 8.8% of the general population, Black people represented “28.8% of arrests involving a single charge, 30.5% of arrests involving two to five charges, 33.8% of arrests involving six to nine charges, and 38.9% of arrests involving 10 or more charges” laid by Toronto Police Services (OHRC, 2021). Black males are less likely to be referred to diversion programs outside of the justice system for cannabis possession than white males (Samuels-Wortley, 2022) and Black people are more likely to face poor-quality charges than white people (Wortley and Jung, 2020). Charges facing Black people are often withdrawn or dismissed. These statistics demonstrate a significant interruption in the daily lives of Black people in Canada, a lack of fairness, unbiased discretion among police officers, and an unnecessary load on courts across Canada. The Ontario Human Rights Commission (2021) highlights that “being charged, in and of itself or in conjunction with pre-trial custody, can have serious negative consequences for charged individuals in terms of financial hardship (job loss, legal expenses, etc.), diminished employment prospects, interrupted education pathways and reputational harm” (n.p). When charges are not withdrawn or dismissed, Black people are less likely to be granted bail as compared to white people when the offence charge is the same and criminal history and other important factors are considered (Commission on Systemic Racism, 1995; Paperny, 2017). Black people are more likely to be detained prior to trial (Kellough & Wortley, 2002) and research demonstrates that when bail is denied, people feel immense pressure to plead guilty even when they are innocent (Canadian Civil Liberties Association and Education Trust, 2014; Euvrard & Leclerc, 2017).

Participants also shared that they received little to no help when they were the victims of crime or when their loved ones had been victimized:

“The Shawnigan Lake RCMP Detachment completely botched my uncle's death due to lack of professionalism such as telling my aunt that the lady who hit and killed my uncle was really sorry. This detective also didn't even bother giving the lady a ticket. There are plenty of people with stories like mine.” (Community member in British Columbia)

“My sister was almost killed by her drunk landlord and the police didn't even investigate. The man got off scot free.” (Community member in British Columbia)

“Dealing with a criminal justice system in which my sister was the victim of – I was a witness to how this system apprehended the accused (white) and afforded her with advantages and benefits that any other person of colour in the accused’s position would not have been granted. Moreover, the criminal Justice system showed its ass and verified exactly what I’ve always known it to be: A biased and flawed system.” (Community member in Saskatchewan)

“My local police is the RCMP - In a recent interaction where I reported another student threatening to curb stomp my 12 year old son, police were very dismissive and did nothing about the incident, not even a conversation with the other student’s parents!” (Community member in British Columbia)

“I did advocate for a girl who did not get support from police when she and others were threatened by a white boy's racist video. Many people felt that if the roles were reversed, there would be a different outcome and consequences for the boy. The police don't seem to want to treat people equally so there needs to be better policies and consequences when they don't adhere to them.” (Community member in British Columbia)

“The police did not contact my family to inform us of the horrific death of our loved one even when the news outlets were reporting on it with full information of who she was.” (Community member in Saskatchewan)

“One participant shared about a parent whose son was shot in the head and shoulder who was known to be a soft-spoken boy. Police came to the scene, but justice is not yet served. They [police] are there without serving justice for Black victims and added, “check the TPS website and you will see all of the unsolved killings of young Black men.” (Community partner in Ontario)

“I have been attacked three times; 2 in a grocery store. I had police sleep outside my house when racist attackers threatened to kill me and my kids and husband. They defaced our car, drew swastika signs on the house, swastikas and hangman's noose, even the baby on the car, and wrote "get out and you are not welcome”.” (Community member in British Columbia)

Some respondents also shared that they felt that they were treated like criminals when they were the victims of crime and sought police assistance:

“I was attacked by four white guys, but I ended up being the one arrested and the cop threw me to the ground.” (Black male community member in British Columbia)

“Supporting victims starts at the moment of contact with police. As someone who had a go to the police for a crime, I was discouraged by the level of indifference they have shown me. They made me feel like a criminal instead of the victim in need of their help. I am not [sure] if I was a white woman, I would get such inhumane treatment.” (Black female community member in Alberta)

“Traumatizing. I didn’t receive supports, I developed PTSD, I was charged because I didn’t say who did it even though I was the victim” (Think 2wice, 53)

A service provider in Montréal spoke about her experience of trying to advocate for a Black youth who was being victimized by a white youth and ended up being taken away by the police. She recounts how the police refused to listen to her, threatened to sanction her if she proceeded, and how they made both her and the youth feel powerless:

“One of the young boys was a 14-year-old Black boy and the other was a 14-year-old white boy. Both of them I knew. The white boy was actively really beating up the Black boy. At poor judgment, I right away was trying to separate them. At the same time that I'm getting in the mix, the police are coming, about four of them. They grabbed the Black boy, really manhandled him. They began to put handcuffs on him. And I said, ‘hey, hey, I know them, we're gonna see their parents. This is an altercation that got out of hand’. And an officer said to me,’ are you interfering with police work? ‘And I said, ‘no, I'm just trying to help the situation’. He said, ‘if you continue, you will become a part of the situation’. And I just, I remember just feeling like what the heck am I supposed to do? I'm standing there, I'm watching. I just remember feeling so trapped and the Black boy was looking at me with this… I can't even describe the communication that was coming from his face. Like, honestly, I felt tied in the powerlessness with him. The police began to escort him. The white boy was gone. He ran out of there. I followed, you know, at a distance behind them. I was able to get to work, call the mother. The boy ended up in the back of the police car. It took a lot of space in my mind, like me going through that, thinking ‘where is he? What is he experiencing? What time is his mom going to get off work to go get him?’ He's 14. That really stayed with me. I never saw that boy. He never came back. I really believe there was a component of shame and embarrassment because this was a kid I was seeing all the time. And the mother didn't approve of him coming back to the Teen Zone because she felt that's where he got into trouble. It was difficult.”

Importantly, this unwillingness of police to fully assess the situation and listen to Black community members happens alongside the persistent assumption that if a Black person is involved, they are offenders and a tendency to escalate situations. This has fostered an extreme reciprocal distrust between Black communities and the police. Community members in British Columbia, Ontario, and Nova Scotia shared that there is a “trust deficit”:

“There's simply no trust between the Police and Black People. Zero trust on both sides. In the most common cases, it’s caused when the white public tries to weaponize the police to their advantage. As soon as the police are called and a Black person is present, there's already an assumption of guilt.”

“They [police] are fake friendly.”

“There is an inherent state of paranoia with Black people around police. Almost where you feel like you have a fight or flight mentality.”

Black community members shared that they had to develop strategies to deal with police and that they had to teach these strategies to Black children. For example, a mother in British Columbia said:

“I have had to adapt, absorb, learn, accept, appreciate, welcome, turn my cheek, forgive, fight and survive. I have a boy, aged 26 and a girl, aged 30. I not only fear for my life but worry every day that the police/RCMP will be the ones in the end that will mistreat him especially!”

Community members in British Columbia, Québec, and other parts of Canada commonly reported feeling that there is a lack of accountability for police officers and a lack of justice for police misconduct:

“I feel that most times the police get a pat on the back, you know, or a tap on the shoulder for their behavior. It is very difficult for them to be brought before the justice system and to answer to the racist behavior. They often seem to find a way to get out of it, but I think there should be clear consequences for that.”

“I feel like we need to hold the system accountable, if we don't... the violence against Black bodies in Canada, in Quebec, and Montreal for over 300 years [will continue]. I have archives of people getting killed by the police in the 1700s, 1800s, 1900s. The police …killed Anthony Griffin, Marcellus François, Trevor Kelly in Côte des Neiges. All of that is still happening. We can talk about Nicholas Gibbs. What happened to those police officers? We want to know, we want to have answers and we just don't want to have answers, we want to know is that person going to get fired? Is that person going to go to jail because they committed murder? What's going to happen to the person?”

“We never, ever hold police accountable. We don't have a law that says, OK, that police officer, you stopped me for no reason. NBA players, they curse the referee and get fined, but he's just a professional athlete. Now, imagine someone that's supposed to serve and protect you. They kill you and get away with it. But the police that killed a person is like, ‘yeah, but he had a criminal record’, ‘yeah, but two years ago, he sold crack’, ‘So that's why, you know, we understand why he got killed’.”

“I realized what the system lacks from the inside and the outside is fair and just internal affairs. We need a police for the police.”

Participants also highlighted feeling that their efforts to hold police officers accountable through complaint systems were usually “pointless” and did not result in positive or reasonable outcomes. One participant from Québec stated that ineffective accountability measures have left many Black community members feeling like they were “a victim twice”. These feelings are elaborated on by community members and community partners in Québec, Ontario, and Nova Scotia:

“I was just thinking about who the onus should be on? Because the police harass us. And then it's also our responsibility to go to file a complaint against them. It takes years, it takes resources, it's like you're a victim twice. It doesn't make any sense that it should be you that goes through this entire process after you've been harassed.”

“I cannot remember a positive interaction with the police. I prefer to stay away from them. I don't trust them. And I do put them all in one bucket, because that's based on my experience. The trust isn't there. I've had experience with regards to reporting an incident that happened to our organization. At the police station I was treated like a criminal. And I am going there to report a crime and you're treated like you're a criminal. And I personally would not feel comfortable going in person to make another complaint, I would do it online. And again, that's from my experience.”

“Where do the parents of these children find accountability?”

“One of our partners specializing in violence against women told us that it is even more difficult for Black women to file a complaint. It appears that the justice system greatly lacks empathy towards Black women. In addition, there is a tendency not to take them seriously when they file a complaint.”

Relatedly, participants had an issue with the lack of data collection tracking what police officers do while performing their role. They stated that a lot of policing practices directly impact Black people and can lead to trauma but are not accounted for. A community member in Québec said:

“When you talk about numbers and how they're calculated we know that there's a lot of Black individuals or Black males that are in the justice system. They’ve gone to court, they have their sentence, those are the things that we hear about. But what about all the things that we don't hear about when the police officer stops you and he thinks that you did something, but it's not you. Okay, so, are numbers calculated in terms of all the times that the police do something or approach somebody? No those are not calculated. So, we never hear of all the things or the injustices that happen. Racial profiling exists. I've been stopped on more than three occasions because I wear my hair low. I was driving a certain car, you know, it's dark and when they come out with their flashlight on both sides, they roll down your window, [they think] ‘he's got his hand on his gun’ and then realize, ‘oh, it's a female’. Black people are born into trauma.”

Another common theme identified across the engagement sessions was that participants felt that systemic racism and racial bias are deeply embedded within police culture, organizational priorities, and practices. Participants across the country shared:

“Racism in policing is real and has material effects on Black people. Until this country addresses the lack of accountability and culture of no expectations on police to act with respect and composure when they interact with Black people, very little will change in the justice system.”

“Systems are in place to deal with internal police racism. It is the generally mono-cultural police leadership in Canada, which often 'overlook' violators or if they can't hide it, provide non-existent sanctions to [police] offenders. 'Slap on the wrist'.”

“For me, it's just been shocking to see the amount of them wearing that pin, the blue lives matter [thin blue line] pin. I've been very wary and essentially move out of their way, especially when I notice that type of symbol, knowing their mentality, and how you're going to be treated, you never feel safe around them ever.”

The flaws in policing culture across Canada have also been discussed elsewhere. Systemic racism in policing culture can persist even after policing bodies engage in efforts to increase racial equity in outcomes and be more culturally responsive. The Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights (2021a) asserts that “failures of an era in which racial and cultural biases were direct and intentional aspects of policy may continue to be reflected in the inadequacies of present” (p. 89). This happens because “bureaucracies reproduce themselves; in the process, they also reproduce their institutional culture and problems” (Leuprecht, 2020). This process of absorption has been found across justice institutions in Canada. For example, in her work on women’s prisons in Canada, Hannah-Moffatt (2001) writes “prisons are remarkably flexible institutions that absorb, adapt, and accommodate a variety of competing and sometimes contradictory rationalities” (p. 5). This happens when old cultures, beliefs, and practices persist but are confronted with new beliefs and ways of doing things. All of this together suggests the need for policing bodies and other justice institutions to overhaul, revamp, and develop a truly innovative set of approaches to address inequities and implement them at the same time and in a timely fashion rather than slowly. Addressing one problem at a time or expecting progress from only a few small changes has been shown time and time again to lead to a perpetuation of the status quo. Problems are continually reproduced. For example, participants of the engagement sessions identified how absorption plays out when “diversity hiring” alone is used to address systemic racism. Black police officers, like police officers from other racial groups, adopt police culture. This means that they can end up reproducing the same harm against Black people that other police officers do. In their own words, participants in Québec and Nova Scotia shared:

“I think that there's a lot of exclusion at the hiring stage. I'm not against saying that they should review their hiring practices, so that if a Black person wants to become a police officer, they can. But I take issue with the idea that just increasing diversity is gonna address the issue, because I think that doesn't change the culture…the institutional culture is the same. Black police officers are also part of the institution and then the same harm is being replicated. But now it's actually being done by people that look like you and I found that to be more harmful. Because before I would say, ‘well, you know, there's so few of us, there's no one to support us’. But now it's some of the people that look like us that are doing this harm. So of course, if we were to still have a police force, anyone should have the right to join. But we can’t make that the solution.”

“Training and increasing diversity aren’t going to make a major difference because the police system is a racist institution so there needs to be a major structural change to how police operate. We must start with having serious checks and balances, so they don’t abuse their power. There needs to be funding for cultural organizations that support the Black community in dealing with the police, especially organizations that support victims. Anti- racism training needs to be part of all police training and not just a separate module. It must be embedded within all aspects of police training”.

“There is a lot of work that needs to be done… They talk about training. But I am for the notion of defunding the police in the sense that there has to be a different use of those funds because just putting more police officers in the streets, yeah, you're gonna get some Black ones and different members of the BIPOC community, but I don't see, I don't see any improvement be made. So again, my statement, for me, I stay away from the police.”

These excerpts from participants suggest a lack of confidence that increasing diversity and improving training alone will not fully address systemic racism in policing. Culture must also be addressed through a real shift in policing policies, practices, sanctions, oversight, and the informal messaging given to officers about their work. Policing services, forces, boards, and associations should take the concerns of Black and other racialized people seriously. Police should accept that if they want to improve their relationships with communities and not be perceived as “all bad”, they have to remove members of the police that are bad. Protecting officers that consistently participate in misconduct harms Black communities, families, and individuals while also increasing the lack of trust between community members and the police. Participants made very clear that the “thin blue line” of protection for bad police officers and “the old boys club” have got to go. Recommendations on how to address the numerous issues shared here have been gathered from Black people currently and formerly in custody, Black community members, Black individuals with lived experience in the justice system, Black victims and survivors, Black criminal justice actors, Black community partners, and other service providers are shared in the section on “policing recommendations” below.