City launches new racial profiling policy
I’m officially a cynic. After several stinging reports about racial profiling in La Presse over the last couple of days, the mayor called a press conference with the chief of police and an STM honcho and introduced a new racial profiling committee and new guidelines for the police, the STM and the city.
But I have a feeling that a year from now I’ll still be linking to stories about how more black people are stopped by police. Racist attitudes are too ingrained in too many people for this kind of official PR stuff to work. I’m willing to bet ordinary policemen were rolling their eyes at each other as they heard about it.
I would love to be wrong about this, but let’s see what the numbers look like a year or so from now.
Charles 00:01 on 2012/01/18 Permalink
I’m pretty sure that in a lot of cases, citizens and shop owners are the ones calling the police about young (black / punk / homeless) people are hanging around… the public has to be educated too.
Michael Black 00:54 on 2012/01/18 Permalink
There again, back in 1986 or ’87 the Quebec Human Rights Commission had a hearing on racism within the Montreal police force, or something along those lines. Another thing people have forgotten. Somewhere on those 5.25″ floppies is what I submitted at the time.
Nobody’s calling the cops if you’re walking along a busy street doing nothing out of the ordinary, in broad daylight. It’s their own initiative.
The issue isn’t particularly who they stop, since you don’t have to be black to get stopped. It’s the point that too often the initial contact is “let’s see some identification”. It’s not that you’ve done something and that they are investigating, it’s that they have picked you and seek something on you. Otherwise they’d have some legitmate reason for approaching you, and technically they have to have some stated reason to “arrest” you. But hey, they think you are a criminal, and they want to verify it by checking for something outstanding.
It gets worse, since it doesn’t even matter if they did that, people can make mistakes. But they still treat you like the criminal they first approached you as, the fact that they found nothing doesn’t change their mind. A whole lot of this could be erased if they simply apologized on the spot, or even merely treated you like their boss, rather than swearing at you.
It’s a simple thing, they work for us, it’s not the other way around. Once they cross the line, they’ve lost authority.
They aren’t doing their job. If someone is running for a bus, or because the light is about to change, that shouldn’t be seen as suspicious behaviour, but even if it was, since they are treating people like criminals, they aren’t even starting out with a chance for someone to explain themselves. Indeed, they often don’t ever explain why you’ve been stopped, which means you are seen as guilty no matter what you’ve done, a lousy way to see the world.
How can a police force be useful if they are the source of violence? How can they protect that portion of the population that they’ve already abused in some form? How can they expect respect when they haven’t given it? How can they expect that portion of the population to be helpful when that portion has been treated like criminals?
Nobody should ever forget that all the rights that are given to actual criminals aren’t there for the criminals, they are there to ensure that the non-guilty are not treated wrong.
Michael
Steve Quilliam 11:31 on 2012/01/18 Permalink
I’m all for profiling wether it be racial, age, location etc….There are reasons for that and it is not because they are racists but because the statistics proves that certain types of people are committing more crimes than other therefor i want the police force to protect us and to go after the criminals.
I dont think there’s much profiling against haitian women in their 50′s, 60′s or 70′s simply because they are not likely to commit crimes. But on any givin saturday night if i was to go out in night clubs i can easily spot who is likely to have guns and/or knives on them. This phenomena is not only in Montreal but every major city in north america. Let’s stop blaming the police and let’s look at the reality of things because otherwise we will never fix this problem.
When i was young and driving a sports car i was profiled and ticketed a lot more than i am now. And guess what ? They we’re right as i was speeding most of the time and i was driving a car that most drug dealers we’re driving.
The insurance companies are charging a lot more for men in their 20′s than for women in their 20′s for insuring their cars. Now, who is likely to commit more car accident ? Young men or young women ? So why no one is blaming insurance companies for ”profiling” young men ?
Let’s stop this ”politically correct” thing.
Kate 12:44 on 2012/01/18 Permalink
We could debate this all day.
Michael Black, I think you’re at least partially onto something. Beyond individual police prejudices there’s also police machismo. “Never admit you’re wrong” is probably the unofficial motto of any police force, so even if someone checks out to be 100% on the up-and-up police are likely to do or say something to remind them they’re still able to fuck them up if they wanted to. That is definitely a problem, as is their body language and general approach to certain ethnic communities. The combination of bravado and fear described in the approach of the police who killed Fredy Villanueva is typical but it is not helpful.
However, it’s so easy for a white guy to assume that since he has rarely if ever been hassled by cops for no reason, nor have most of his friends, that it isn’t happening. I’m afraid it really does happen, all over town, but more often in neighbourhoods like Saint-Michel and Montreal North. The numbers prove it, and not just here. I’ve linked to stories in the Guardian about exactly the same phenomenon in London. I’m sure the same thing applies in the banlieues of Paris.
But you ask good questions. How can police expect respect when they haven’t given it? That’s the nub of the thing.
Steve, I’d also apply my remarks about white guy assumptions to you. Imagine this. A bunch of young guys are horsing around. They’re white. People cut them slack – they’re young, they’ve had a few drinks, they’ll go home and sleep it off. But if they’re black, the cops may well get called. This I’m not making up: last year I linked to a Gazette story on racial profiling which included a police anecdote about getting a 911 call about black guys attacking each other with sticks. The cops rushed there at top speed to find four guys playing street hockey.
You have to get into the mindset. So much comes from assumptions being made. You mention the middle-aged Haitian woman? A few years ago a middle-aged woman in the West Island was cleaning up her garage with the help of two male friends. The next thing they knew, they were surrounded by police. Why? They were black, and somebody had assumed that black men moving things out of a garage in that area must be crooks. Here’s a CBC story on this from 2008. These were not teenagers, they were middle-aged people at least one of whom owned a house in the West Island.
The problem is that to so many people the same action reads differently if seen to be done by a white person vs. a black person. The white person is innocent till proven guilty, the black person is too often the reverse. And if you’re white it’s very easy to be oblivious to the problem at all.
KC 15:07 on 2012/01/18 Permalink
Heather Mac Donald’s an authority on profiling. Her 2001 City Journal article on the subject (http://www.city-journal.org/html/11_2_the_myth.html) is still worth a look.
Robert H 18:46 on 2012/01/18 Permalink
Well…..I had to take a few breaths after reading Steve Quilliam’s comment. Now that my composure has returned, I want to thank you Kate for your response to his misguided assumptions and faulty analogies. It was lucid, thoughtful, and most importantly, accurate. Mine would not have been quite as temperate, but I react empirically on this issue.
I think of the La Presse series on racial profiling as an important public service to be received not only by politicians and police but all of us. I suppose I could justify my own biases by thinking of myself as a straight-talking, candid soldier in the battle against political correctness, but I know better–and so should you, Steve. Actuaries in offices make business decisions based on statistics. Police on the street make potentially life-changing decisions based on how they asses a person or a situation, and the consequences are greater than the difference between my premium and my sister’s.
Kate 20:12 on 2012/01/18 Permalink
In 2010 La Presse had some stories about a report by a police criminologist which revealed numbers showing that the arrests and questionings of black people in Montreal had blown up out of all proportion. Patrick Lagacé told an interesting tale at the time about how police knew of a Turkish gang running drugs into town, but since these men were white, they didn’t figure in the police definition of “street gang” so the force didn’t put efforts into catching them.
The numbers showed at that time that police stop just about as many black people here as white people, although blacks account for only 14% of the population.
KC, your linked article is sad stuff. It reads like “Profiling doesn’t exist, but if it did it would be justified.” Anyway, the SPVM numbers are attested to by their own criminologist (they tried to suppress the report, but it came out anyway). It can’t be said that it doesn’t exist.
If I want to know about racial profiling, I don’t ask another white woman what her opinion is.
So, I have a friend who’s originally from Africa. B. is in his 50s, well educated, fully employed and smart.
Although it should not be relevant I’ll also mention he’s about five foot one.
B. works in a big downtown building. He was working evening shifts a few years ago and went to work, walking through the lobby and getting on an elevator as usual. A woman was in the elevator – not a security person, nobody he had ever seen before.
She demanded he get off the elevator immediately.
B. says he just told her calmly he was going to the 20th floor or whatever it was, that he was on his way to work.
The woman escalated things, pushed him, called for security. Security came and asked him to please leave the elevator. He explained again he was expected at work, showed them his pass card. The woman continued some kind of tirade and the security men continued to deny B. use of the elevator.
B. is still fighting to get some kind of satisfaction about this, because he was shaken up that security would automatically side with a white woman against him, even though he’s law-abiding, was on his way to work in a perfectly normal way and (although he wouldn’t put it this way) as a small man in his 50s he would hardly constitute a threat to anyone in their right mind.
That’s racial profiling. Ask any black person, and they will tell you about it.
Steve Quilliam 00:59 on 2012/01/19 Permalink
Ok, i get it. I get your point. All of Montreal police officers let alone most citizens of Quebec are racists. They are profiling the young black youths street gangs for no reason at all. The same should be said about most police officers in most US major cities.
Young black youths running around with guns and knives is pure fiction fabricated by the evil white men like me. Young black street gangs intimidating other people or shooting randomly from cars at others because they are wearing the wrong colour in the wrong neighborhood doesnt exist. The police shouldn’t profile them and should just let them have fun.
After all, as you say, Kate, ‘”but since these men were white, they didn’t figure in the police definition of “street gang” so the force didn’t put efforts into catching them”, i must come to the conclusion that all mafioso and bikers that have been arrested since 10 years or so we’re all ”non-white” ! Little did i know !
It’s funny but when growing up i had never came across anyone with a knife or a gun. I have had arguments with other shool boys, fought some of them, i witnessed some brawls beetwen anglos and francos, i have worked in night clubs for 7 years etc… but i have yet to use, to see or touch a gun or knife in my life and i have never seen anyone used any. Till i started ”dealing” with some street gangs, most of them being haitian or jamaican descent.
Now, i challenge anyone to come with me in any night clubs on a saturday night where many black street gangs or street gangs wannabe hangs out and if we we’re to check them all we would find enough ”weapons” to start a store. Believe me on that one !
They can sell pot, import cocaine for all i care, they can steal cars at night, fraud the goverment or make graffiti all over the city but when it come to violence, intimidating other young people, stabbing or shooting at others….. then that’s way to much for me. I dont want Montreal to become like most big US cities. No way !
I’ll always support the police force to profile just about anyone, anyrace, any age, any social level etc…. if there is even a tiny chance of someone having weapons. Anyone putting pressure on our police force to not profile such individuals is putting our teenagers and our young adults at risk.
I’m sorry but safety is non negotiable. We should do just about everything possible to make our street safe…..or even safer than they are !
KC 13:01 on 2012/01/19 Permalink
Kate says (irony alert), “If I want to know about racial profiling, I don’t ask another white woman what her opinion is,” the white woman in question being Heather Mac Donald. Check out Heather Mac Donald at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Mac_Donald and http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/mac_donald.htm. Pretty smart for a blonde!
James 13:21 on 2012/01/19 Permalink
ARGH
James 13:28 on 2012/01/19 Permalink
racist
noun
1.
a person who believes in racism,
racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination.
…so whether or not all of quebec is racist, you are a dictionary definition of one.
B. B;acl 08:10 on 2012/01/24 Permalink
I find it ironic that racial profiling is seen as a practical policing tool when it comes to gun violence & street gangs, but why isn’t racial profiling encouraged to other crimes such as sexual assault? Drug abuse? Homelessness? White collar crimes?