Two years after nationwide consultations with communities across Canada, the RCMP is ready to begin a new initiative it hopes will help officers better understand the experiences of racialized and Indigenous groups.
The police force’s race-based data collection initiative will kick off in select communities across the country. One of these communities is Thompson, Man., with a population of around 13,000 people. The city, according to 2021 data from Statistics Canada, consists of over 1,700 immigrants and just under 2,000 people belonging to a visible minority group — defined as someone with an Asian, Arab, Latin American, or Black ethnicity.
The data further breaks down the number of religious groups in the city, stating that a little over 10 per cent of the population identifies with a religion outside of Christianity or non-religious beliefs.
Additional Statistics Canada data show that in 2022, there were 1,950 incidents of violent crime. The rate of violent crime for the year was over 14 per cent.
Other communities included in the agency’s initiative include Whitehorse in Yukon and Fort McMurray in Alberta. In a release on Tuesday, RCMP said the communities were chosen “based on a number of factors,” including public consultations held between 2022 and 2023.
It noted that the aim of collecting, analyzing, and reporting on race-based data was to “better understand the experiences of Indigenous, Black, and other racialized individuals and communities in their interactions with RCMP frontline officers.”
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The agency said its initiative hopes to:
- Identify the differences in policing outcomes for Indigenous, Black and other racialized communities.
- Better understand the nature, extent, and impact of systemic racial disparities in community safety.
- Enable data-drive decision making and policy development.
- Build rust with communities.
- Improve community safety outcomes.
Some of the data expected to be collected relate to wellness checks, arrests, and use of force incidents.
The idea of collecting such data, according to Michael Weinrath, isn’t something new. As a professor of criminal justice at the University of Winnipeg, Weinrath noted that organizations have been collecting and publishing such statistics for years. With the police, he said, there’s some reluctance due to a number of factors, including privacy concerns, allegations of racism, and how the numbers may not always tell the whole story.
“On the other hand, there’re some possible advantages to collecting this data… in terms of aggressive or over policing. When they stop someone from whatever reason, (are they) more likely be Indigenous people, racialized groups, or minorities. That may be something useful for the police to know themselves… it’s all well and good to be enamored with proactive policing and going out and trying to find possible crimes before they’re committed. But maybe we’re being overaggressive in those areas,” said Weinrath.
He further added that there’s a benefit to the groups affected if data is collected. But if change needs to happen, it can be simply up to the police to handle the jobs of other groups like social services, addictions and mental health counselling, or housing supports, he said.
“You can always perhaps see it as a level to try to get more services for those individuals. We as a society have to do more than just pick up people and hold them overnight so they sober up,” said Weinrath.
The professor highlighted concerns about over policing across the country when it comes to Indigenous or racialized people. He also said that the RCMP is under pressure to provide those statistics.
In 2020, then-RCMP commissioner Brenda Lucki acknowledged that systemic racism existed in the police force.
“If you’re going to address those questions of systemic racism, you need to have data and be able to show that if you are not systemically racist, that you are trying to do something about those charges,” said Weinrath.
In an email, the RCMP said it could not accommodate a request for an interview right now.
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