On February 23, we got more concrete evidence that trying to reform the police doesn’t work – and never will. Researchers with the Tracking Injustice project released their preliminary data on police-involved killings in Canada revealing there have been more than 700 police use-of-force deaths in Canada since the year 2000. And Black and Indigenous people accounted for 27% of those deaths, although a lack of race statistics means the real percentage could be much higher. So, despite the increased budgets for more training, hiring more officers – especially diverse ones – and expanding community policing, the cops keep killing people, especially Black and Indigenous people.
Police and their supporters keep telling us that the police need to be reformed, not abolished. They say we must be patient because “these things take time” but change will come. Yet, the evidence tells another story.
In May 2022, the Ottawa Police Service released its use-of-force race data showing they use force disproportionately on Black, Middle Eastern and Indigenous people. OPS Deputy Chief Bell presented the use-of-force race data as if they had collected it voluntarily. They didn’t. The Ontario government ordered them to collect it over two years ago just like the Ontario Human Rights Commission ordered them to collect race-based traffic stop data back in 2013. And nine years later the result is the same: the OPS treats Black, Indigenous and Middle Eastern people worse. Nine years of reform – more training, hiring more diverse officers, and expanding community policing – has done little to stop the police from disproportionately harming brown marginalized people.
Last year provided some of the strongest evidence of why the Ottawa Police Service in particular is beyond reform.
2022 started with the “Freedom Convoy” occupation in Ottawa where the Ottawa police stood around doing nothing for the first three weeks. Then came the resignation of Ottawa’s first Black police chief, Peter Sloly, accompanied by media stories quoting “unnamed” OPS sources using the standard – and very racist – angry Black man narrative accusing Sloly of bullying and volatile behaviour that compromised the force’s ability to cope with the truck protest. Sloly had faced racist resistance from day one after he began making changes to address systemic racism and sexism among other issues. The Ottawa Police Services Board hired Sloy’s replacement, Eric Stubbs, three days before Ottawa’s election, despite calls to postpone the hiring until after the vote. And the Board didn’t just hire any guy to replace Sloly. They hired the guy who led the BC RCMP’s operation to violently remove Wet’suwet’en people protesting a pipeline being built on their land.
So, before diversity at the very top could fundamentally change the Ottawa Police Service – the OPS got rid of the diversity. Yet, the new chief keeps saying diversity and inclusion is one of the OPS’ priorities and that they plan to ensure plenty of diversity among the 25 new officers they plan to hire. But having a more diverse workforce didn’t stop five Black Memphis police officers from beating Tyre Nichols to death in January of this year. The OPS issued a statement condemning those officers supposedly because OPS officers would never be caught on video viciously beating a Black man who later died…well, except for Abdirahman Abdi.
More diverse officers don’t change policing – policing changes them. It changes them even if they work with units with nice, euphemistic names like SCORPION, the Street Crime Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhood – or Neighborhood Resource Teams, like the OPS calls its latest “community policing” initiative. It changes them. And we will soon have data that will likely back this up…
In November, 2022, the Ontario Human Rights Commission welcomed changes Ontario’s Solicitor General had made to police use-of-force reporting form including allowing it to “capture important contextual information about use of force incidents, such a…demographic details about the officer who submitted the report, such as their age, race, and gender identity.” (They also added the capability to collect factors that informed the reporting officer’s perception of the subject’s race, the subject’s perceived age and gender identity, de-escalation options used by the officer and the level of physical control used.) The problem is the word “allow”. If officers aren’t mandated to include their race, they likely won’t.
Another popular reform that people argue will reduce police violence are body cameras – especially after the May 2020 murder of George Floyd. In June 2020, Ottawa Police Service Board acting chair Sandy Smallwood, told former Ottawa police chief Peter Sloly that the Board had received several emails from members of the public demanding body-worn cameras for police officers and asked Sloly his opinion on them. In a July 2020 Ottawa Citizen article Sloly said research was “mixed at best” on how useful the cameras are at decreasing use of force by officers and that the financial impact of the pandemic on the police force would mean trade-offs would need to be made between any investments in (body-worn cameras) and other OPS and board priorities currently underway.
Ottawa’s new police chief, Eric Stubbs, acknowledged the conflicting body camera research at the Ottawa Police Services Board’s February 2023 meeting – then the Board 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.
Despite the overwhelming evidence that reforms don’t work, some Black folks, including some very high profile ones, continue to advocate for reform.
In February, during Black History Month, George Floyd’s brother Terrence visited Ottawa and spoke at two events. In an interview on the popular Breakfast Club podcast he explained why his Brooklyn, New York-based We Are Floyd Foundation partners with the New York Police Department, “I want to change the narrative….I want to bring the narrative back from my era where you had the police playing basketball with us…you had them understanding our culture and our community…I mean you had the bad apples but the majority…we saw them interact with us.”
There are several problems with brother Floyd’s position. The first is that the narrative he wants to change “back” to is the one the police have been pushing for years – and still are. That is the idea that the problem is only because of “a few bad apples” and that the solution is increasing “community policing”. However, despite increasing police budgets being used to hire more diverse officers (i.e. good apples) and expanded community policing, the police continue to shoot and kill unarmed Black people – including 61 people – and counting – since George Floyd’s murder.
A student who heard Terrence Floyd speak in Ottawa was quoted saying that, “hearing from Black leaders in the community and from Floyd is motivation to continue conversations around equity, diversity and inclusion. Change doesn’t take place overnight, but seeing how the eyes are open towards the issue is beautiful.” This idea that talking is the way to end systemic oppression and that those talks take time to have impact, is core to the idea of reform. And that’s because reform is a way to give the appearance of change without actually making any fundamental change.
That’s what’s led to the explosion of the diversity and inclusion illusion: performative change that looks good – but doesn’t actually change anything.
And the ironic thing is that there is such a huge push back against equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) initiatives despite so much of it being performative. Popular anti EDI commentator, Jordan Peterson, got so popular attacking EDI that he left his job as a tenured psychology professor at the University of Toronto to write books and make YouTube videos and do stadium tours promoting his content.
Police love reform because it means more money. More money to hire more diverse officers. More money for training. More money for body cameras and…more money for performative EDI that changes nothing.
It’s time to give up on the myth of police reform and continue defunding the police and reimagining community safety.
Note: After I posted and shared this post, a fellow abolitionist shared a great article by Critical Resistance distinguishing between reformist reforms which continue or expand the reach of policing, and abolitionist steps that work to chip away and reduce its overall impact. Some of the abolitionist steps include suspending the use of paid administrative leave for cops under investigation, prioritizing spending on community health, education and affordable housing and decreasing the size of the police force.