Jason Lawson: Advocacy groups question Vancouver street check review, call for ban

VANCOUVER — Advocacy groups are questioning the validity of a Vancouver police board review of street checks after an incident reported by the authors didn’t make it into the published final copy.

The BC Civil Liberties Association, Union of BC Indian Chiefs and Hogan’s Alley Society say street checks should be banned completely because they are an example of systemic racism and disproportionately affect Black and Indigenous people.

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The groups shared a letter from the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner that says an investigation is underway into the conduct of two officers alleged to have made insensitive comments while being observed for the review.

The letter says one officer is alleged to have made inappropriate and racially insensitive remarks and another was alleged to have made inappropriate comments about vulnerable and marginalized people, had anger issues and was extremely rude to a member of the public.

Street checks involve officers stopping a person and recording their information, regardless of whether an offence has been committed.

Chief Don Tom says the checks are inherently threatening when the officer has a gun.

“Street checks must end, period. Street checks represent a first interaction with police or one in a repeated pattern of harassment, but either way, they put people at risk of further being drawn into a system that criminalizes them,” Tom says.

The police complaint commissioner’s letter says the conduct was included in a draft version of the review and the advocacy groups are calling for the public release of all versions of the report.

“What good is a report reviewing police conduct if the very conduct under review is being omitted, hidden and ignored,” Tom says.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 25, 2020.

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