By KRISTA LOEWEN
Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) issued an apology on Sept 7, 2024, in the North Preston community for the historic use of street checks and other harmful interactions. It was an apology too long coming for the African Nova Scotian community, for the treatment that was, in the words of Rev. Lennett Anderson, “dehumanizing and tragic.”
In their 2019 report, written for the NS Human Rights Commission, Dr. Scott Wortley defines street checks as any occasion civilians are stopped and questioned by police, subjected to intrusive questions, and personal information is collected into a database. He confirmed what community members have known for years: people of African descent in the Halifax region are almost six times more likely to be street checked.
Five years after this report was released, RCMP put word to action, apologized for the harms caused, and presented five action items they would take, developed in consultation with 13 African Nova Scotian communities and the Association of Black Social Workers. The action items are:
• Increase diversity and equity training within the force with the goal of at least 60 people trained per year.
• Increase community involvement of RCMP in historic Black communities.
• Increase numbers of African Nova Scotian and racialized employees within the RCMP
• Consult the RCMP’s National Anti-Racism Unit’s race-based data collection team
• Continue annual and ongoing reporting
Rather than confidence that the organization will make real changes, these pledges inspire skepticism. And drafting the proposed actions together with community members simply allows the RCMP to maintain a façade of care for those they were created to oppress.
This is not the first time the RCMP attempted to redress their troubled history. In 2019, the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girl’s inquiry scathingly concluded RCMP proved they cannot hold themselves to account. The testimonies in the inquiry shed light on genocidal violence enacted upon Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA people – highlighting the deaths of women in police custody.
Pamela Palmater, chair in Indigenous Governance at Toronto Metropolitan University, explains “today’s racist government laws, policies and actions have proven to be just as deadly for Indigenous peoples as the genocidal acts of the past… What used to be scalping bounties are now Starlight tours (freezing deaths in police custody).” The RCMP issued a statement in 2019 promising to do better by delivering new training, strengthening investigations, increasing community engagement, and hiring more Indigenous employees – the very same promises made to the African Nova Scotian community six weeks ago.
Since August 29, 2024, at least nine Indigenous people in Canada have died in police custody or as a result of police interactions. For example, wellness checks for Steven “Iggy” Dedam and Hoss Lightning-Saddleback ended in death at the hands of RCMP officers. This is not a new phenomenon.
CBC maintains the Deadly Force database of people killed by police from 2010-2020. Data shows Black and Indigenous people are disproportionally represented. Sixteen per cent of people killed are Indigenous, despite making up only five per cent of Canada’s population. Similarly, Black Canadians form 8.63 per cent of deaths and only 2.92 per cent of the population.
In response to the recent increase of Indigenous deaths, Conservative MP Raquel Dancho, criticized Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s failed promises to reform First Nations’ policing since 2019. Will the Nova Scotia RCMP fair differently with Black Nova Scotians?
The first action item, increasing Anti-Black Racism training, assumes individual RCMP officers are to blame – diverting attention from the structural racism that is at the root of the problem. Helping Mounties feel better about participating in a colonial structure placates White fragility but ignores the oppressive legacy of police in Canada. An African Nova Scotian survey participant in Wortely’s report stated, “the police have been there to help destroy our communities – like they did in Africville. They are still part of a system that keeps us down and maintains the status quo.”
The RCMP cannot just address the problems on the surface, they require a reimagination of police forces.
Instead of addressing the larger structural issues, a few African Nova Scotian people will be welcomed into the force as Mounties, providing credit to the organization by Black-washing the force. Wortley’s report cautions against diversity hiring as officers of African descent struggle in “the police subculture, and often engage in aggressive policing to gain the favour of their White colleagues.”
Putting Black faces in the RCMP serves both to conceal structural racism and enslave Black bodies to a life of White normativity.
The issue at hand is not a few racist RCMP officers, but the sets of violent policies, laws and structures which criminalize and pathologize, shorten life spans and trap people in poverty. Without attacking the base of structural racism, the RCMP’s action plan spreads icing on a rotten cake.
Jocelyn Thorpe, professor at University of Manitoba explains that without larger systemic shifts, change is not possible as “the Mounties were created for a specific purpose: to assert sovereignty over Indigenous people and their lands… if the whole system is based on this idea that some people matter more than others, there’s only so much that can be done.”
In 2019, African Nova Scotian community consultations suggested other ways to improve the RCMP including improved screening for racial bias in new recruits. This “is reinforced by new research which suggests links between right-wing extremist groups and law enforcement and the possible infiltration of White supremacists into both policing and the military.”
Other suggestions to strengthen complaint processes; change performance evaluation criteria away from arrest statistics and shift to community policing models, have all been ignored in the 2024 action plan.
The RCMP paint themselves as a well-meaning organisation – one of Canada’s most recognizable symbols – designed to maintain social control of Canadians through surveillance, harassment and imprisonment.
Historian Greg Marquis writes that the “[RCMP] do a lot of good work, but we also have to realize that they have to be kept accountable to the citizens. And I don’t know if our politicians are always able or willing to do that.”
Entering its 151st year, the RCMP’s love affair with White-washing colonial violence continues. We need to be able to hear the stories of injustice against people of African descent in Nova Scotia. Instead, the RCMP are controlling the narrative through political stunts such as holding the Sept 2024 apology amidst a myriad of Indigenous deaths by their hands.
In the apology, Assistant Commissioner Dennis Daley, Commanding Officer of the Nova Scotia RCMP, states “our hope is that this action plan will lead us where we need to be. We will keep working to make things right, to earn your trust, and to be the fair, respectful, and equitable RCMP that Nova Scotians deserve.”
I firmly believe the RCMP that all Nova Scotians deserve is one that is completely reimagined to give power back to those they have historically oppressed.
KRISTA LOEWEN is a Master of Social Work Student at Dalhousie University and a Harm Reduction Worker with North End Community Health Clinic.
