N.S. RCMP apologizes to African Nova Scotians for impact of street checks

The commander of the RCMP in Nova Scotia says the force is sorry for the wide-ranging harms the province’s Black community suffered due to the Mounties’ historic use of street checks.

Assistant commissioner Dennis Daley issued the apology to African Nova Scotians and all people of African descent during a Saturday afternoon event in North Preston, a predominantly Black community northeast of Halifax.

During the apology, which was livestreamed to several other locations including Shelburne, Sydney and Digby, Daley said the RCMP disrespected the Black community and said he was sorry for the ways street checks harmed everything from economic opportunities to interactions with family and friends.

For Halifax’s youth poet laureate, Asiah Sparks, who spoke at the event, the apology is decades overdue.

“We have a long way to go, and this apology will mean nothing without the actions that follow,” she said, adding that in her short 19 years of life, she has had plenty of “unpleasant interactions with police.”

In her speech, Sparks told her own stories of being stopped by police in junior high on her way to the basketball court, and having invasive conversations with RCMP based on her last name and where she is from.

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“Street checks themselves have caused so much harm,” Sparks said. “It’s not just the violations, but also the humiliation. And this apology of course is a step to move forward, but it will never undo the harm that has been caused.”

A similar sentiment is echoed by longtime community member, Allister Johnson.

“We can’t undo the past,” Johnson says. “But if the RCMP can go forward into the future knowing the past, then maybe we may have a better relationship.”

But for Sparks, today raises the question — why has it taken so long?

“When will we not have to repeat the same things our ancestors have? The ones before us? I’m really just saying the same things everyone else has already said. Why do I have to?” she said.

2:38 Montreal police accused of interfering in an independent study looking into street checks

Now banned in Nova Scotia, street checks — also known as “carding” in other parts of Canada — involved police randomly stopping citizens to record their personal information and store it electronically.

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

In November 2019, then-Halifax police chief Daniel Kinsella issued a formal apology to the city’s Black community, acknowledging that police actions and words over the decades caused mistreatment and victimization.