After more than a decade of collecting and storing street checks records, Halifax Regional Police say they’re finally ready to purge.
The original files and metadata will be scrapped from the system in December 2020, according to a draft policy introduced at the Halifax Board of Police Commissioners meeting on Monday.
It’s a move that favours privacy, said Interim Police Chief Robin McNeil, and one that’s long overdue.
“We agree that it’s a gap in our system,” he told reporters at City Hall. “It’s (a policy) that we should have already had. We didn’t.
“That’s why we’ve taken these steps today to say we’re going to put that in place and not wait for someone to tell us whether we should or shouldn’t.”
The policy will be finalized in the next few weeks, but police are advising anyone wishing to access their own personal records to do so through the existing Freedom of Information process by October next year.
Until the purge, access to the database will be restricted to supervisory officers and members of the Crime Analyst Unit, and the only records that will remain in storage afterward are those relevant to ongoing investigations or court cases.
READ MORE: Halifax Police address moratorium on street checks in Nova Scotia
The drive toward deletion is in response to a March report that found black people in Halifax are six times more likely to be street-checked than white people.
A temporary suspension has been put on the practice while the provincial government plans its next steps, but on Wednesday, Justice Minister Mark Furey confirmed that a permanent ban is not in the cards.
“What is needed are strict regulations around how street checks are applied and officer training to enhance respectful and professional interactions with citizens,” he wrote in an emailed statement.
The Board of Police Commissioners has now asked Halifax police to prepare a community communications strategy that clearly informs citizens of their rights in situations where they’re approached by police in a stop, interaction or investigation.
Despite Furey’s insistence, Nancy Hunter of the Coalition to Ban Street Checks remains convinced that the practice will end eventually. Her organization has collected more than 3,500 signatures in support of an outright ban and plans to present the petition to the legislature in the fall.
“I think the institutions are being pushed to look at their racist history and their racist practices, and people are speaking up and saying, ‘No more.'”
READ MORE: There will be no apologies from Halifax police, RCMP over street checks
The Justice Department’s inflexibility on banning street checks is the reason the African Nova Scotian Decade for People of African Descent Coalition (DPAD) walked away from the community engagement process last month. The group was part of the Wortley Report Action Planning Working Group, but refuses to negotiate regulation on a practice it considers illegal.
On Wednesday, it sent a letter to Furey on Wednesday morning outlining its conditions for returning to the discussion, including better resourcing for community participation and access to independent legal advice on the legality of street checks.
“We’ve always said that the coalition and the African Nova Scotian community…want to work with government,” said DPAD program co-ordinator Vanessa Fells.
“We want to resolve not only the issue of street checks, but the issue of systemic racism and anti-Black racism in the criminal justice system. But we can’t give away our human rights doing it.”
The Justice Department confirmed via email that it has received the letter and is reviewing the terms and conditions. Furey said he hopes DPAD will return to the table, and he’s “disappointed” they left.
“I encourage all members of the working group to continue to engage and have a voice in these important discussions,” he wrote.
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