Speech to Niagara Regional Council on Police Reform on Behalf of Niagara Region Anti-Racism Association

Speech as Delegation From Niagara Region Anti-Racism Association to Niagara Regional Council at Continuation Meeting on Police Reforms

I am Saleh Waziruddin from the Niagara Region Anti-Racism Association.

This is a very important conversation you are having, but it is missing an important part.

The BIPOC communities and other marginalized peoples who feel discriminated against and mistreated by police, and you heard from some of them last meeting and today, need to hear your support.

In the last few months cities from St. Johns, New Brunswick to Victoria, British Columbia have been passing resolutions stopping street checks, re-allocating calls for police, and more. Let's not kid ourselves, most of those municipalities have no more control over police than you do, it's the police services board that makes policy.

So this conversation is not the place to get bogged down into the nitty gritty policy work which needs to be done but it needs to be done elsewhere, the police board and the province. What our communities need from you this afternoon is send to the police board and the province a loud and clear message that you support us and recognize we are telling you we face discrimination, even if you don't agree with the actual police reforms we are asking for because it's not proved. Those reforms are not actually decided here but your message is.

This week the Ontario Human Rights Commission came out with Part II of its Toronto Police Services report “Disparate Impact” and even with all the data Toronto has, which is more than what Niagara has, they said they still can't prove there is racism in the police, but that there is a overwhelming circumstantial evidence there is racism in how police do their job. We don't need to wait for that kind of proof which is something that comes only after years of study, we have enough clues here from what we've heard.

Even for the lack of data in Niagara compared with Toronto we have enough clues from the NRPS's own data, their stats on streetchecks or COII (Collection Of Identifying Information) if you want to call it that show there were disproportionate stops of Black and Indigenous people, 12.5% and 1/3.

You've heard how the police say they are open to dialogue and working on racism. But we can't help having doubts when we heard Monday for example that an armored vehicle is not an armored vehicle, though its manufacturer calls it that. Or that streetchecks were abolished when they are just regulated and the NRPS's own web site had a page on how they do streetchecks until ironically it was taken down yesterday after I and others pointed this out. Or when one police official is asked point blank on CKTB radio "is there systemic racism in the Niagara Police," “I don't believe that systemic racism exists today in the NRPS,” and on Monday night we heard another official say he didn't believe the other official was denying there was systemic racism. It's one thing to deny there is systemic racism, which speaks more to ignorance and itself perpetuates racism, but it's even worse to hear the denial being denied.

So I ask you councillors to be critical with what you are presented, this is not the same as a presentation by the acting medical officer.

So what BIPOC communities are asking to hear from you in this conversation is not a deep dive into policy or picking apart at reform proposals that are in front of you, but a loud and clear message that even if you don't see eye to eye with us, you hear that we are telling you there is discrimination and that the way you can voice this is to pass all the reforms to the police board. There is no limit to your message here, you can add more such as ending streetchecks (or Collection Of Identifying Information if that's what you want to call it), selling the armored vehicle (that's what the manufacturer calls it), adding body cameras, or other ideas from other regions, for example in Vancouver they had not just mental illness calls but also sex work, drug use, and homelessness calls itemized out of the police budget.

It's high time to think big and look at the experiences of all of the people in Niagara, not to restrict yourself smaller and smaller into what's proven with great difficulty. You don't have control of the police but you do have control of the message you are sending. This is not a policy exercise but a correspondence test. Our communities are listening to see what you say in response to what we have been telling you.