I just spoke at the Ottawa Police Services Board, as I do almost every month. Below is what I said…
“Well, here we are at the first meeting being held under the draconian and authoritarian new rules you all voted to implement at your last meeting. But, before I continue, let me define what draconian and authoritarian mean because I suspect some of you don’t know. Draconian means “excessively harsh and severe” and authoritarian means, “favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom.” Let me also state for the record what changes you made to public delegations. You limited delegations to only one hour when there was never a limit on the total # of delegations before. You kept delegations to 5 minutes but, under your new rules, if more than 12 people sign up for the hour time slot, each delegate will be cut to 3 minutes. You said you are giving priority to people who haven’t spoken in the last 3 months, which appears to directly target myself and other activists who make the effort to speak regularly. And, finally, you now require people to submit their remarks in writing beforehand. And, although even your own motion doesn’t say we have to provide our written remarks word-for-word, Chair Valiquet is forcing us to even though that’s not what you voted for.
Now, you said you wanted our written remarks beforehand so you could better prepare to engage with delegates and, seeing as I complied and sent you my remarks 3 weeks ago, and because I suspect that I am one of a few, if not the only, delegate today because of these new rules, I certainly won’t waste the Board’s valuable time reading my remarks now but will, instead, spend the rest of my time taking your questions.”
Not one Board member asked a question. What follows are the full written remarks I sent the Board March 3:
“You said you made these changes so the Board can have time to do its important work of ensuring Ottawa has adequate and effective police services. So seeing as you just gave the OPS a $15 million raise I will spend the rest of my time talking about how effective – or not – the OPS is.
The OPS is very effective at its own propaganda. We saw an example of that last month when, during Black History Month, Chief Stubbs attended a service at Parkdale United Church where George Floyd’s brother Terrence spoke. And I gotta hand it to you, that was a brilliant PR move. A photo op with George Floyd’s brother, with former police chief Peter Sloly on one side and Ottawa community activist Gwen Madida on the other. Too bad it got zero attention. What also got little attention was what happened to Gwen a few days later. A few days later Gwen posted a picture of her bloodied face saying she and a young Black man she was with had just been assaulted by a white man who called them the N-word repeatedly while he was doing it.
And the whole thing was caught on video…Gwen called the police…so was their response an example of effective policing? Did they charge the man with a hate crime like they rightly charged the students who committed the act of antisemitism at an Ottawa high school last fall? We still don’t know and this really makes us question how effective the OPS hate crime unit is.
So we question how effective the OPS is at stopping people from hurting Black people…and we also question how effective the OPS is at stopping young Black men from hurting and killing each other. We know the OPS has a Guns and Gangs unit that had 22 officers as of last year. So, how many guns did the Guns and Gangs unit seize last year…especially those from the US? We ask because in July last year media reports said that of all the handguns involved in crimes in Canada that were traced in 2021, 85% came from the U.S.
We tried to find out more about this but couldn’t find anything on the OPS website giving any detail at all about the success – or lack thereof – of the Guns and Gangs unit. And there’s no point filing a Freedom of Information request because the OPS has denied every one we’ve submitted.
Why would the OPS make it so hard to find out how effective they’re being at reducing the numbers of illegal guns in neighborhoods where lots of young Black men live?
But let’s change focus and look at how effective the OPS is at addressing one of the main issues identified by the majority of Ottawa residents: traffic. The OPS budget you approved last month says that, in multiple public surveys, Ottawa residents identified road safety as a top concern and that it remains a number one priority for the OPS. However, during the March 1 budget meeting, Councillor Sean Devine said he had spoken to Deputy Chief Bell about his constituents’ concerns about traffic and that the Deputy Chief had told him policing is not the answer to speeding and road safety. Really? Even with a budget of more than $400 million dollars that includes 37 officers in the Traffic Services Unit? Do you really think that is effective?
Perhaps the OPS will spend some of their $15 million increase on some expensive traffic tech saying that it will increase their effectiveness. Because that’s what they tell us about tech like body cameras. The OPS says body cameras will reduce police violence. But, in June 2020, Ottawa Police Service Board acting chair Sandy Smallwood asked Chief Sloly his opinion on body cameras and the Chief said research was mixed at best on how useful the cameras are at decreasing use of force by officers. He also said that the financial impact of the pandemic on the police force would mean trade-offs would need to be made between investments in body cameras and other OPS and board priorities. Chief Stubbs acknowledged the conflicting body camera research at the Board’s February meeting – then you and Ottawa City Council approved the budget that includes a body camera pilot project – and everything else the OPS asked for. No trade offs needed. Our view is that, rather than helping to make the OPS more effective, body cameras will just lead to more trauma porn.
So, despite all the evidence of the OPS’ ineffectiveness, you gave them a $15 million dollar raise. And you did that even after Justice Rouleau released his report on the Ottawa trucker occupation that countered the leaked OPS narrative that the OPS failure was all former Chief Sloly’s fault. The report says, “Much of the focus of the evidence was on Chief Sloly. It is all too easy to attribute all of the deficiencies in the police response solely to him but this would be unfortunate and indeed, inconsistent with the evidence. As well, some errors on Chief Sloly’s part were unduly enlarged by others to a degree that suggests scapegoating.”
So if Chief Sloly wasn’t solely responsible, who else was? We don’t know because you haven’t done your job and asked those questions. You just gave millions more to the OPS despite the fact that the OPS’s own data shows they spend less than 1% of their time responding to Priority 1 calls where there’s imminent threat of bodily harm. Meaning, armed OPS officers spend 99% of their time doing things like directing traffic, babysitting construction sites and responding to mental health calls. They also spend much of their time over-policing marginalized people including moving unhoused people away from businesses and using force disproportionately on Black, Middle Eastern and Indigenous people.
So because you’re not fulfilling your mandate to ensure effective policing in Ottawa and you’re limiting public input that would help you do your job properly we’re filing a complaint against the Board with the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal.
It’s time to continue reimagining community safety in Ottawa by finally giving up on the myth of reforming the OPS and freezing the OPS budget pending the outcome of the line-by-line audit of all city services, including the OPS.”