Lip Service
The Community Safety and Well-Being Task Force was formed by Edmonton city council last summer in response to protests and hearing on anti-Black racism in the city. Oumar talks to task force member Irfan Chaudhry about the recent release of the task force’s recommendations, the nature of committees in creating change or exposing hypocrisy, and the police’s attempts to keep any change within their own purview.
Irfan Chaudhry
That’s one of the concerns the police had, is “you only focused on policing.” Well yes, we did only focus on policing because there was a lot more energy and accountability we felt we could place there versus trying to do too much and have like a 1000-recommendation thing that really is meaningless.
We want 14 things that we know are in the purview of the city, because our report goes back to city council. That was the audience, so that was always the focus of the task force. We can’t recommend things that are more in the jurisdiction of the province or the federal government, because that’s a really easy way for people to just pass the buck and not have any action.
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Oumar Salifou (Host)
Community and personal safety is something I don't think any Black person has taken for granted in this city given not only recent events, but our long history of racism in Edmonton — from a series of brazen attacks against black Muslim woman in broad daylight, to a Black student at Rosslyn School being violently attacked by a group of students while being called a “nigger” during the assault.
This doesn't even account for the unreported harassment, attacks, and slurs Black folks have contended with that don’t get into the public eye. When it comes to institutions that are meant to protect and prevent this hate, what we’ve seen time and time again is that they aren’t equipped to help when attacks happen, and have even perpetuated harmful practices onto the Black community through their actions and policies. Police practices like carding, which have been shown to target Indigenous and Black Edmontonians at disproportionate rates, have now conveniently been changed to “street checks” by Alberta's first Black justice minister, Kaycee Madu, when it's clear that the practice is the same in what seems like an attempt to uphold the status quo while parroting change.
We're now seeing these institutions attempt to change in a way that, on this show, we've been very skeptical of before. Specifically committees, how they can be used to deny potential action that's already been proposed, and as a potential tactic to delay change and eventually just revert back to the status quo.
In this episode, the committee in question is the Community Safety and Well-Being Task Force that released 13 recommendations to city council. Some of these recommendations include: professionalizing policing by creating a regulatory college for cops, expanding the number and use of crisis diversion and alternative policing teams, looking into collective agreements and how they might contribute to systemic bias, and bringing new transparency and independence to the public complaints process.
Download the full report from the Community Safety and Well-Being Task Force.
These recommendations were presented to city council on April 6, and after discussion the council moved to have city administrators consider how 13 of these recommendations can be implemented. Arguably one of the most important recommendations — to bring police funding in line with comparable cities or otherwise just basically cut police spending — was denied on the basis that a funding decision like this shouldn't be made on behalf of the next council, which will be elected soon in a municipal election during the fall.
In the face of thousands of Edmontonians asking for change in police spending and data showing 30% of calls for service are mental health related and can potentially be diverted. We’re still left waiting for the results of the next election when councillors will have the same information in front of them, which leads me to believe that if decisive action isn't taken, these steps are being taken to avoid any budget cuts altogether while not taking responsibility for opposing the community asking for this change.
The other 13 recommendations, while relatively reasonable and sometimes even incremental, received some criticisms from some city councillors and, especially by the police union that wrote an open letter calling it “insulting and demeaning to every police officer in this city.” If this is the response to recommendations that are pushing for reform, I think it's clear that all the language surrounding change and transforming the Edmonton police is simply a call to make change on the Edmonton police’s terms without accepting community input outside their own parameters.
The ridiculously low-res letter from the police association, available on Scribd.
To talk more about the Community Safety and Well-Being Task Force and what can be done about racism in our city, I'll be joined by Irfan Chaudhry, a member of the task force and a Criminology lecturer at MacEwan University. Irfan is the creator of Stop Hate AB, a website told to report hate crimes in the community, and has done work around exposing the realities of racism in our city and province.
He serves as the director of MacEwen University's Office of Human Rights, Diversity, and Equity. He's also a former civilian employee with the Edmonton Police who has seen what the institution is capable of from the inside.
Just a note from my interview with Irfan, I mentioned that the task force had their meeting last week, since this episode was released, that meeting actually happened on April 6.
Oumar
What really brings you to the table when it comes to doing work around not only the Community Safety and Well-Being Task Force, but the other work that you've done around anti-racism?
Irfan
Yeah! My name is Irfan Chaudhry, I work at MacEwan University as an instructor in Criminology and also the director of their Human Rights Office.
But that's not necessarily what brought me to the task force or the work. Over the last number of years, I've been involved in a number of hate crime-related reporting spaces. We're just trying to get a better understanding of what we currently have and how it impacts communities in a negative way, and what we can do to improve on reporting of hate incidents specifically.
So I created Stop Hate AB as a third-party hate-reporting tool. I’ve also done a lot of work around the realities of racism in our city and our province in a number of committees and task forces I've had a chance to sit on. I previously worked with the City of Edmonton on a project called Racism Free Edmonton.
So that's kind of always been the weave and the thread there. I think what brought me to the task force... My very first job out of university was with the Edmonton Police Service as a crime analyst, so I have a strong interest in policing. But now when you kind of mesh it with my interest and expertise around equity and inclusion, I have a very strong interest and commitment in ensuring the two are merging appropriately. I haven't seen that happen if I'm being completely honest. Whether in Edmonton or elsewhere.
I think right now policing in general is in a space of reckoning, of course. And we saw that come to fruition last year with the multiple protests regarding police violence and use of force. And you're observing that police services are becoming more — they’re using the language of equity inclusion a lot more, saying like “we're committed, we're going to address things, we're going to do this and that.”
But I think the practice is really what needs to be challenged. So what led me to the task force is knowing the experience I had at the table, and a few other people that are also on the task force. We didn't know who was going to be on the task force until we were appointed, but now that I reflect on seeing some of the other folks on the task force, I feel a lot of us knew what questions to be asking and also where to challenge. And that's one of the reasons why I wanted to have a role in this task force. Because I've observed, even in commission meetings, the right questions aren't being asked to be able to dive into the issue of equity and inclusion within policing in Edmonton. So that's what drew me to the task force, and I think a number of folks around the table had a similar interest.
Oumar
Edmonton has recently seen a wave of hate crimes against black Muslim women. And I think it's pretty fair to say that racism is not only alive and well, but I think pretty brazen when it comes to hate symbols and groups that are organizing themselves. So when these attacks happened, I think community members were rightfully wondering what can be done about this in a meaningful way, from leaders in elected positions, but from a policy perspective as well.
So from the work that you've done in the past, what do you think are actionable items or things that people can expect to see that will seriously curb these incidents of hate, and actually tackle racism in Alberta in a meaningful way?
Irfan
For me, this is one angle I've been pursuing quite a bit from the policy side of things, and the potential for (I wouldn't even necessarily say) “federal” legislation change, because hate crime laws haven't been looked at in any significant way since the 1990s and it's now 2021. I haven't seen any appetite from any federal minister to pursue that, nor do I think that's even the right place to start if I'm being completely honest.
What I've observed is you'll often see municipal and provincial leaders default to saying “well, the criminal code, which falls under the federal jurisdiction, limits our ability to do anything. So we can’t do anything.”
But I want to challenge that a bit more. Why can't we do anything from a provincial level? Why can't we do anything from a municipal level if we know that federally, some of those laws aren't strong enough. So one of the things I've really tried to pursue, and I've had some really good conversations with folks in provincial government and in Edmonton around how we can utilize bylaws or legislation around banning symbols of hate at bare minimum.
Right? Like that could be the bare minimum we can do, because oftentimes people will say “well, this Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the freedom of expression, freedom of assembly…” Sometimes these gatherings have been coming up where people have had Tiki torches and what not, not being able to do anything because of our current legislation.
But I've been connected to a colleague out in Portland, Oregon, and they've been successful in getting through their Senate — their state senate, so the equivalent of our provincial government — a bill that would regulate the presence of symbols of racial intimidation at public protests. So they're going a bit bolder because of the history of the States. They're calling for a ban of nooses at these types of events where you see right-leaning and white supremacist groups, because the noose historically in the American context has very, very strong symbolism connected to lynching and slavery and racism that there isn't enough to kind of curtail people from saying it's “just a noose.” They know well with the context that a noose is not a noose, especially in that context.
So they’ve been able to legislate — I can’t remember what reading it's on, but it's fairly close to getting passed I think — they've been able to legislate the banning of nooses at these types of protests that we've seen in our province, around the guise of racial intimidation.
And so I've pushed that kind of an idea and that narrative to some of our sitting leaders, some from the opposition. I haven't had much luck with anyone in the current UCP government. But I haven't tried if I'm being completely honest, because I'm not sure who the appropriate person would be.
But what's stopping us from, you know... When you have these gatherings at the legislature grounds, for example, we're still allowing people to have their freedom, to express whatever view they want to. But if we see symbols that we know are impacting racialized communities, specifically in a negative way — even though it might not overtly be stating that as much, even though it might be someone saying I'm doing this for “religious purposes” as were some of the arguments being put forward by some of the groups — I think we can still have legislation in place or even a bylaw in place that says, if this is happening on public grounds that the city controls, we're not going to tolerate any kind of racial intimidation symbols.
We don't have anything like that right now. And I don't know what's stopping us or impeding us from considering how our own localized, whether municipal or provincial, legislation can fill in the gap that's currently left from the federal aspect. Because then what you get happening is exactly what we see. It’s people just kind of passing the buck around saying “well, it's not a crime, so police can't get involved.”
And that I agree with 100% — if it's not criminal related, police shouldn't be involved. But then where can we find those gaps? Whether it's communities stepping up, whether it's municipal government stepping up.
A similar thing happened… I don't know if you've been following this story in Vermilion where a house was found to have really hateful messages on their private property. And they were targeting Dr. Hinshaw, they were really overtly sexist, overtly racist in terms of language being used. And the community was saying “why is this allowed to happen?” And technically, it didn't fit the threshold of a crime when you look at it from the criminal code perspective. But Vermilion came together and their council put together an order that demanded the signs would be removed, and the person complied.
And you can see when you have that level of governance come together quite quickly, things can be addressed. So I think that's where we need to have some bold leadership, because oftentimes it's not until people who are impacted by these types of symbols or language raise the concern — because our political landscape and leadership landscape still has a lot of work to do around being diverse and reflective of our communities — unless it's being raised to you as an issue because you don't experience it personally, you’re not really going to know it's something to address, right?
So I think those are pieces where we can still advocate for change at very localized levels. And knowing we have a municipal election coming up in Edmonton, and I believe Calgary is also having the same cycle as well, these would be questions I'd be asking candidates, you know? What's your commitment to addressing the exact thing you just asked me if you were elected to city council? And it's very easy to get answers that are meaningful versus answers that are just BS — you know, “I support everyone, equity and inclusion means everything to me.” Okay. But what does that mean in terms of addressing hate symbols? Unless someone can give an answer for that, that's someone that I wouldn't necessarily be voting for. Because that's an important civic issue for me based on exactly what you talked about and what we're seeing here in Edmonton.when it comes to the task force specifically.
Oumar
When it comes to the task force specifically, we’re seeing a slate of recommendations that went to city council last week. I want to go back to the work that was done internally with the task force, and the rhyme and reason of a few of the points that you brought forward to city council.
I was wondering if you can remember 3 of the most pressing, most important recommendations that were made, and why and how you think they will really be impactful to changing policing in Edmonton?
Irfan
I can't narrow it down to 3 if I’m being completely honest, because we think all of them are important and that’s why we had to have them listed there. But what I can share in terms of how we got to this space is overall principles that we had kind of established as we work together as a task force.
A lot of it was accountability within policing. So that’s where you’ll see recommendations around enhanced training — not just checkbox training, but training around anti-racism, anti-oppression, equity and inclusion, unconscious bias, but having it embedded within the life cycle of a police officer's career. Because right now, from our understanding, it’s only given really in the recruit phase, and it’s essentially optional throughout someone’s life cycle as a police officer.
But trying to embed that within the advancement process for example. So if you’re going to go to a sergeant or a staff sergeant, or an inspector or superintendent position, those things around equity and inclusion should be looked at and evaluated in that process similar to how they might look at leadership skills and leadership development.
So I think that's what we were trying to build in terms of some of that increased accountability through training and awareness of some of these key aspects that might lead to racial profiling or acting in ways that are impacting communities of colour.
The other thing though, that of course we can't shy away from, was the money, right? The money was a big, big aspect. And the task force members, the ones that weren't connected… Because we had folks from the City of Edmonton there, we had folks from the commission there, and the police there. But the ones that weren't connected to any of those entities, I think we were always very much reminded of the 140 or so Edmontonians that came together last summer to share their concerns with city council around the topic of policing. And we had some really good data to help us frame what most people were saying in those hearings.
And of course you had those polar opposites, from a policing perspective and an abolish perspective. But what the middle ground people were asking for was around increased accountability, increased transparency, and just a better utilization of funds as it relates to policing. And a more equitable distribution. Because there's been a lot of discussion around how, not just Edmonton, but numerous police forces tend to get the bulk of the city's budget. And 85% or more often is related to human resources and personnel. And so really trying to challenge ways of, can we still support what we need for policing but also give some of the community-facing organizations an equitable chance of getting funding to do things that police might be doing right now that are probably well-suited within the communities’ perspectives.
And so one example is that we had members from Bear Clan Patrol. I don't know if you're familiar with that group, but it's fairly new — they were brought up in Edmonton over the last 6 months. And essentially, they'll go out in evenings and weekends, especially in the winter time, just looking to take care of people who are experiencing homelessness. Providing them with gloves or blankets or food or clothing, other things that can help them at least adapt to the circumstances that they're in at that time.
When you have community-based organizations like that are volunteer-driven and not funded in any meaningful way, how can those types of organizations be better funded? Because you're still feeding into the community safety ecosystem without relying on policing, right? So what would come up during these meetings is we had a number of high profile things occur that reminded us of the need for better utilization of funds, and to look at some of these community organizations.
Bear Clan Patrol also had video of them being booted out of the LRT in minus 30 weather, and homeless individuals in Edmonton being treated in very non-dignified ways. Because whatever happened from a City of Edmonton or policing perspective, their directive was to remove people from the LRT by any means necessary.
That's not compassionate policing. And that goes against what some of these police services are seeing in terms of being more compassionate and more equitable in terms of how services are delivered. We're not seeing that. And there was time and time again throughout the task force where Edmonton-specific examples kept coming up. That would really frustrate task force members.
Because whether it was this Bear Clan example, whether it was other examples of police policing themselves — concerns that came up around use of force and then former police officers saying “no, we didn't see anything.” And then the office is recused from that.
It’s those types of systemic patterns that this group was trying to challenge. I think this is what is sometimes missed in the conversation since the report has been public. Because there have been some allegations out there that this report is targeting the Edmonton police service in a negative way.
It could be perceived that way, but I think we also have to look at it more holistically. We’re looking at the system of policing, and Edmonton does have a police service that needs to be changed. So it’s not just a matter of Edmonton — we know we would likely have these same recommendations to other police services as well given the context of the systematic change trying to be implemented here.
The challenge now that we have in front of us... We’re no longer a task force — the 90-day period that city council has provided administration to be able to look at the feasibility of 13 of 14 recommendations. They didn't accept the last one around police funding because they didn’t feel it would be fair to the new incoming city council to do that. But looking at how the 13 can be administered and incorporated, because I think there is an appetite, from I’d say most of the councillors, around changing the system. And the only way to do that is to look at what you've done and try to do it differently, because what we have right now isn't working.
And I would also echo that it's not just policing that has the same issue. What you're observing is organizations that have traditional paramilitary-style, hierarchical structures. Policing is one of them. Firefighting is another one of them that often doesn't get discussed enough, but we know as having similar issues. Then more broadly, what does have a militaristic system is the military.
All 3 of these systems are reporting, over the last number of years, instances around racial discrimination connected to staff members or people that they serve. Allegations of misconduct within the military, allegations of misconduct within the Calgary police service related to racism. These are all things that are publicly out there, and the similarity that you see is the structure of those systems.
And so I think it's come to the point now where, if we want to start to dismantle some of those systems to provide better service for everyone involved, then it is asking some of these tough questions around accountability and how funds are utilized. Where's funding going, what kind of training is received? How is it impacting the people who are receiving the training and, more importantly, people on the receiving end of your training as a result of the actions that you take.
That's really the spirit of this dialogue. It’s not to try to target a certain police service, as it's been taken. It’s trying to really understand policing as a system that we know is problematic and has been acknowledged in various ways, including the Canadian Association for the Chiefs of Police who came together and said yes, systemic discrimination is an issue within policing.
But acknowledging it isn’t enough. Now you're seeing the hard work — you're being provided with, in this case, 14 recommendations for how you can start looking at systemic discrimination. And I only speak for myself here in terms of a task force member. But then the default response from the police is saying the information is not evidence-based and inaccurate, even though we utilize information that was provided to us from the City of Edmonton as well as them.
So if that information is not accurate, then maybe things you're also doing are not accurate either. During the deliberations with city council, one of the city councillors who is also a commission member didn’t say it directly, but underlyingly tried to challenge the report as unethical because of a line in the report that said, regardless of who's in council at that time, these are things that need to be addressed right away.
For whatever reason, they were trying to frame that as an unethical line and then discounted the whole report as a result of one small sentence. Like it was very, very bizarre. And then of course you have the response from the police association calling the report itself racist, and then challenging the integrity of people at the task force.
And I just want to remind listeners, right? The task force was made up of a very, very diverse group of Edmontonians. Some of whom I would say in the past have been the strongest supporters of the Edmonton police service because of the community related work that they had been involved with in the past.
To claim that this group lacks integrity, to claim that as a group lacks ethics, and then to claim this group is reporting on things that are not evidence-based, that's just reaffirming systemic bias and discrimination. Because I've never seen another task force being labeled in such a negative and derogatory way as this group has been framed as. And that I think has really disappointed a lot of the task force members who spent 3 hours in the evening every week over the span of 8 months, because they were committed to addressing this issue in a meaningful way. To just flippantly say that the task force members lack integrity, lack ethics, or lack evidence — for us it just kind of reaffirmed the reason why these types of reports are needed. It exposes — once the challenging work needs to be done, rather than doing the work itself, you start to expose those individuals who provided you with recommendations as the problem themselves.
There's a scholar out there named Sara Ahmed, she talks about how when you start raising the issue, you become the issue. And so that's really what’s been, in my opinion, redirected only from the policing side. Because what I've observed from the City of Edmonton side, they're doing the work. They've committed 90 days to report back on how they can implement a lot of these recommendations. But we haven't seen the same response from the police.
Oumar
It seems like they want to keep that change within their own purview. You know, they keep mentioning how these… They have the Chief's Advisory Council, they have PACT, they have all these things happening internally. So they don't necessarily want to engage with the external change that's being proposed on the table. And I personally think that allows them to keep funding going, that allows them to keep some control of how these things are implemented or maybe not implemented. But do you have an opinion on that, or is there a way for them to come to the table?
Irfan
That's a really good question. And, you know, that was something always on top of mind for a number of task force members. We would always kind of forecast — if we recommend this, they're going to say they're already doing that. That's why we wanted to elevate some of those recommendations to be more accountable. Because you're right.
The other layer there though, I look at something like the recent HELP Unit that they've just established, where you have police and a social worker going around inner city Edmonton and redirecting people away from the justice system. While on the surface that's okay, the question I always get is “do police need to be doing that?” Because that's where this argument comes, where we’re now going to ask city council for more money to expand the HELP program, which is a community partnership. That's all good, but the question is why wouldn't we just give that money to Bissell, for example, that they've partnered with to do that work. Still have a police liaison connected to the program, but the funding should be provided to these community groups versus the police.
And that I think is often the tension we see. When you want to try to roll out some of these initiatives, trying to empower other groups to be able to also take on ownership. And that includes financial ownership of some of these programs, because one of the things that our task force wasn't able to get to which was out of our purview was the way bias is present within the delivery of funding and grant options.
You see, for whatever reason, certain communities that are connected to different racial or ethnic groups in the city have to rely on a third-party organization such as REACH to be the holder of the money for them to be able to distribute it to their community. And so that creates distrust around “why can't you provide us directly with the money? Why are we on an added layer of surveillance? And you have to use an intermediary to give us funds that we want to utilize for community safety?” So we couldn't get into that.
But that's another layer, right? Because the National Council of Canadian Muslims, they released a report a few weeks back that highlighted how a number of Muslim organizations and charities in Canada were inequitably audited by the federal government looking for connections to, in this case, terrorist funding. But it was very, very inequitable. And it was also very discriminatory in terms of why they were doing that.
Download the report from National Council of Canadian Muslims on discrimination in government funding for organizations and charities.
And so that's another piece of the puzzle that often doesn't get discussed enough. But then when you have intermediaries, whether it's the police or the city providing funds, but then also providing barriers, this also challenges the ability for funds to get to where they need to go.
So rather than “punishing” groups by not giving them funds directly, if you don't feel comfortable or don't feel they have the capacity to navigate funds you're going to be giving them, provide capacity building. Provide coaching. Provide one-on-one connection to the person that's serving the grant, so that you can ensure that they can carry out the grant appropriately versus default saying “we don't know if you can handle the money, so we're going to give it to this group. And then they’ll be the ones to give it to you.” That creates mistrust.
Oumar
It kind of seems like a difficult proposition, because I think for a lot of people even something like the 30% proposed cut that BLM was asking for based on calls for service, I think that's something that realistically could have been taken on by city council and could have been discussed at that level without necessarily needing a task force.
What was a worry when this was all happening last summer was that these things would be taken to a task force or taken to a committee level, a lot of work would be done only to end up in the same kind of position where the status quo is upheld and things only move by miniscule level or, like you said before, it’s only given lip service. We say that we’re anti-racist, we say that we want to systematically change, but things aren’t really happening.
So for those who are still kind of left with the same asks that they wanted to kind of get passed before, what options do you think are available? You mentioned we’re going into a municipal election, what do you think are places that people can push to see these things change more?
Irfan
I don’t want to default to having people run for these positions, because I know there’s a lot of challenges and barriers involved there. I myself ran for city council in 2015 for an open by-election seat, and it was one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done. And you’re putting yourself out there as well, not just that but throwing your family out there as well.
But I think having these types of questions, if you're not interested or able to run at this point in time, put to task the councillors that are going to be running. We’re going to have a new mayor, so what does the new potential mayor have to say about these things? We already know one of the mayoral candidates, who's a current councillor, he's made his position quite clear in terms of where he stands on this .So I think someone like that would likely maintain and embed the status quo if I’m being completely honest. But we don’t know what the other viewpoints are in terms of mayoral candidates.
So I would suggest… This election cycle is going to be really different because people aren’t going to be able to campaign in ways they were able to do prior to COVID. So I think if there’s a collective group together that's really concerned about community safety initiatives and wants direct answers to this, one thing that could be proposed is having a virtual town hall that you invite all candidates and potential candidates for council and mayors to. And take note of who attends and who doesn’t. Take note of who responds in what ways and who doesn’t. Because that’s where you’ll get a sense of where you might want to align some of your voting power behind.
I want people to know that there’s strength in numbers in that way. Because from someone who has run in a municipal election before, anytime you get these types of invitations, you take them up. For you, that could be a potential won or lost vote because you didn't show up.
But even if you show up and say and do the wrong thing, that’s possibly also potentially lost votes as well. Not trying to make this into a vote-getting thing, but I think there’s ways to keep people accountable who want to sit in these positions. So that’d be one.
Number two, I don't think we've put enough onus on how much the Edmonton Police Commission is able to do in these types of aspects. And I don't think that the appropriate levers have been pushed. So that’s one of the reasons why I think it was one of our recommendations to change the composition and recruitment of the Edmonton Police Commission to more comprehensively reflect the community.
I think that’s key. Until we have people at the commission level that are knowledgeable and able to respond and share questions or share insights that challenge how policing has been done for the improvement of it, I think I agree with you, we’re going to get that status quo. So I think that’s really where there could be some change in this time period, some further push. Getting together, having a virtual town hall connected to policing and community safety in Edmonton for candidates. See who shows up, see what’s said, have that information available publicly in terms of what people reported and have others make up their decisions. Because this will, in terms of everything we have on the go right now, definitely be a strong key municipal election issue.
At the end of the day, Edmonton wasn’t the only city that kind of came together to look at how we can make policing more effective. So even though this task force came together under the community safety and wellbeing umbrella, because we had such a small period of time to get recommendations back, we had to work within an 8 month or 6 month cycle, we couldn’t look at everything. And I think that’s one of the concerns the police had, is “you only focused on policing.”
Well yes, we did only focus on policing because there was a lot more energy and accountability we felt we could place there versus trying to do too much and have like a 30,000 recommendation thing that really is meaningless. So we were really mindful of that. We didn’t want to just come up with like 60 things for someone to not do. We want 14 things that we know are in the purview of the city, because our report goes back to city council. That was the audience, so that was always the focus of the task force. We can’t recommend things that are more in the jurisdiction of the province or the federal government, because that’s a really easy way for people to just pass the buck and not have any action.
So we were put to task around making sure that anything we put together was in the realm of municipal government and city council. That’s why the recommendations themselves are so laser-focused on... not even just policing. It’s policing, but it’s also bylaw, It's also peace officers that are employed by the city of Edmonton.
So it’s looking at the law enforcement system, whether it’s in a policing environment or a non-policing environment, it still impacts people the same. We still see reports saying that Indigenous people and Black people are stopped at a higher rate for “street checks” or whatever they might be called now. LRT security data found the exact same thing, you know what I mean?
And it’s not just Edmonton. You see the Vancouver police department just came up with a report that said “our recent survey has highlighted less Indigenous and Black people are being stopped.” But that means they're still being stopped arbitrarily. And it's how that data gets utilized that’s also the concern as well.
You saw similar things over this last weekend where the Ontario government — now they’ve scaled back from that of course — but they said that they’re going to utilize police for spot checks around COVID health protocols. And the uproar you saw on Twitter connected to this — like, you saw lawyers putting out their personal information for Black and Indigenous community members saying “if you need help because you’ve been arbitrarily stopped by the police because of these new measures, call me right away.” Because again, when you expand these types of powers, it does impact racialized communities a lot more.
And that’s the interesting thing. It doesn’t matter how many reports are out there that confirm the same thing. That denial is still there. So I think this is where a task force like this, trying to challenge some of those narratives and the status quo, is really trying to get at some of those systemic pieces that lead to these outcomes.
If I’m honest with you, I think our city council, the current one and administration right now, they’re the ones that put the task force together. They're the ones that are putting 90 days together to come back on the report. So what that report looks like, I’m really curious to see. But I haven’t seen the same appetite from our policing friends. So to me, that’s where it’s really concerning. Because until you're ready to make that change, we are going to continue to see the same aspects continue.
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Oumar
To end this episode and this season, I want to look into the future of what’s possible given our current situation with reforms on the table, but a large amount of uncertainty and work to be done. To do this, I want to read a portion of a book called As Black As Resistance: Finding the Conditions for Liberation by Zoe Samudzi and William C. Anderson.
I highly recommend this book for anyone looking for a good read about the context of Black liberation and resistance, along with the future of what to look forward to in these movements. In the book, the authors make the case for a new program of self-defense and transformative politics for Black Americans. One rooted in an anarchistic framework that the author has likened to the Black experience itself.
While the text is focused on America, I think it also applies to communities in this country and the unique struggles faced here as well. Here’s the text from As Black As Resistance:
Removing oppression, not reforming, demands the creation and radicalization of new dissidents. It is an exercise in imagining new communities. Our identities will be reflected in our willingness to nurture and channel the angst, anger, dissatisfaction, and resentment felt by Black people towards institutions of injustice.
Channeling collective racial trauma into world-imagining energy and analysis is one of the ways we express care for our fellow Black people in our desire to improve their conditions. Non-participation in the systems that harm us is not a choice for many of us. We can learn to undermine them when the opportunities present themselves.
Meaningful steps towards liberation do not have to be dramatic. Steve Biko's assertion that the most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed encourages us to create new ways of understanding oppression so that we may effectively challenge it and recreate ourselves at every opportunity.
It’s been a process to produce this season of Is This For Real? We’ve talked about issues of police policing themselves in Alberta and the broken civilian complaints process with Edmonton lawyer Tom Engel. Heard painful stories of police brutality and misconduct against Black folks in our city, like the stories of Moe, Sifa, and Jean-Claude. Along with police abuses within the school system through the school resource officer program, and the problematic future of police technology and surveillance on our lives. We’ve talked about problems with how the media cover police and Black lives in Canada, along with multiple stories of how elected officials have fallen short on enacting community demands regarding policing and Edmonton.
There are a lot of people that I want to send thanks to for making this podcast a reality. Thank you to the members of our founding team Bashir, Avnish, Nicholas, and our former host Hannan, for all their work, help, and support with this podcast. Thank you to the Edmonton Community Foundation for providing support with this podcast from the very beginning, and thank you to all the patrons on Patreon who supported this podcast throughout the season.
A thank you also goes out to all the members of our board who’ve worked to keep this project going. Stay tuned to our social media for more details on what’s going on next, and a few different opportunities to get involved with this project. Thank you again for listening and supporting the show.
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