Nova Scotia RCMP to apologize to Black community for historic use of street checks

The commander of the RCMP in Nova Scotia will apologize to the province’s Black community on Saturday for the Mounties’ historic use of street checks.

Now banned in Nova Scotia, street checks involve police randomly stopping citizens to record their personal information and store it electronically — a practice sometimes referred to as “carding” elsewhere in Canada.

A provincially commissioned study released in 2019 condemned the practice used by Halifax Regional Police and the local RCMP because it targeted young Black men and created a “disproportionate and negative” impact on African Nova Scotian communities.

The independent study, compiled by criminologist Scot Wortley, found Black citizens were five times more likely to be street-checked than white citizens. Another study found street checks were illegal in constitutional and common law.

The RCMP issued a statement Thursday saying assistant commissioner Dennis Daley will apologize to African Nova Scotians and all people of African descent during an event in North Preston, a predominantly Black community northeast of Halifax. The apology will be livestreamed to several other locations, including the Black Loyalist Heritage Centre in Shelburne, N.S., and community halls in Sydney, New Glasgow, Gibson Woods, Greenville, Digby, Amherst and Monastery.

In November 2019, Halifax’s police chief issued a formal apology to the city’s Black community, saying the gesture was a first step toward dealing with a series of historic wrongs. At the time, chief Daniel Kinsella acknowledged that officers’ actions and words over the decades had caused mistreatment and victimization.

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Almost two years later, an RCMP spokesman said the police force would not offer a similar apology, saying that even though the RCMP recognized the disproportionate harm caused to marginalized communities, the Mounties’ national policy “still supports the use of street checks as a policing tool.”

A national study prepared for the RCMP didn’t recommend banning street checks but instead offered recommendations to change RCMP policy, including that officers obtain citizens’ “informed consent” before checks were carried out.

However, advocates for the province’s Black community made it clear they were not satisfied with the RCMP’s position. And in September of last year, Daley said that an apology was overdue, adding that a series of 14 consultations would be held with members of the Black community.

“I acknowledge a lot of work needs to be done to start to rebuild the fractured relationship with the community,” Daley said at the time. He also said the apology would mention other interactions with police that may have had a negative impact on African Nova Scotians.

The public inquiry that investigated the 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia that claimed 22 lives recommended “the RCMP adopt a policy of admitting its mistakes, accepting responsibility for them and ensuring that accountability mechanisms are in place for addressing its errors.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 5, 2024.