Report on police reforms calls for ditching the RCMP in favor of BC force

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BC should ditch the RCMP in favor of a provincial police force according to a suite of policing overhauls released Thursday by an all-party legislative committee looking into addressing systemic racism in policing.

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“The committee recommends that a new provincial police service take over services formerly contracted to the RCMP,” said the reportTransforming Policing and Community Safety in British Columbia which lays out 11 recommendations for how the province can restore trust in BC police departments, especially among marginalized and racialized communities which have raised concerns about police brutality, racial profiling and over-policing.

The report said municipalities would still have the opportunity to establish a municipal police service, contract with the provincial police service, or enter into an agreement with another municipality or Indigenous community that has a local police service to meet their policing needs.

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Fractured police departments should also be amalgamated on a regional basis and mayors should no longer be allowed to chair police boards, it recommended.

If acted upon, this recommendation could dramatically impact regions like Greater Victoria and Metro Vancouver which are policed ​​by a patchwork of municipal departments and RCMP detachments. The Victoria Police Department, for example, has long complained that it shoulders the responsibility of policing a disproportionate amount of crime and social disorder in the downtown core compared to its suburban neighbours.

The City of Surrey has opted to move from the RCMP to a municipal force, a process that has been so fraught with anger, it’s led to criminal charges against Surrey Mayor Doug McCallum after an altercation with opponents of the police transition.

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Doug Routley, NDP MLA and committee chair, said the report “outlines a vision for policing and community safety that is rooted in decolonization, anti-racism, community and accountability.”

“To achieve this vision,” he said, “there will need to be major changes to the structure and delivery of police services, including provincial and regional policing, oversight, accountability, training and education, and response to mental health and complex social issues. .”

Police should no longer be the first and only responders to people in mental health crises, the report said. The province should “create and appropriately fund a continuum of response to mental health, addictions and other complex social issues with a focus on prevention and community-led responses and ensuring appropriate first response.”

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This means police, health and mental health care workers and social workers should be better integrated to respond to 911 calls.

The report also said better standards must be created around how police respond to people in mental health crises and how they respond to wellness checks, which in some cases have led to people being killed by police.

Earlier this month, Surrey RCMP responding to a wellness check shot dead a man who had threatened to harm himself with a weapon inside a Whalley home.

Police should also improve their standards on responding to sexual assault and conducting trauma-informed interviews.

The committee also wants standardized education and training, including anti-racism training and cultural sensitivity to shift police culture. Police departments should ensure their officers reflect the community they serve including diversity in race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality.

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New recruits should also be screened for values ​​“including humility, honesty, empathy, and lack of bias and prejudice, to ensure that these individuals are best suited for their current position or for advancement and are a good fit for the community,” the report said.

The report also says Indigenous communities should have direct input on the structure and governance of their police force including the ability to provide self-administered policing services which could cover their community as well as neighboring non-Indigenous communities, the report said.

Some of the recommendations could be acted on immediately while some will take years, Routley said

“This is the first step of many steps forward in reforming policing in this province, to restoring transparency and accountability, restoring trust in policing, and a first step in that transformational change,” said Adam Olsen, Green MLA for Saanich North and the Islands and a member of the committee.

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Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth was not available for an interview Thursday but said in a statement: “The recommendations from the Special Committee on Reforming the Police Act echo our government’s belief that everyone deserves equal treatment by the police. This has not always been the case for many Indigenous, Black and other people of colour. Public trust requires that the delivery of police services is fair, equitable and responsive to all British Columbians.

“The committee’s recommendations to reform BC’s Police Act are based on extensive analysis and input and reflect today’s challenges, including addressing systemic racism, mental health, and harm reduction.” Farnworth said its recommendations will help achieve the province’s goal of eliminating inequity and advancing reconciliation.

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The government will review the report’s findings, Farnworth said, and, starting in late summer, will discuss the recommendations with Indigenous partners, community advocacy organizations, health and mental-health groups, police leadership, agencies and police oversight bodies.

The report also stresses that police departments should be required to collect and publicly report race and other demographic data and conduct policy reviews to address systemic racism in policing. Next month, the province will introduce anti-racism legislation that will allow government agencies to collect race and ethnicity data.

Ontario is the only province that requires race or ethnicity data to be collected in police use-of-force cases. A study by the Ontario Human Rights Commission in August found that Black people in Toronto are almost 20 times as likely as white people to be fatally shot by police and six times as likely to be taken down by a police dog.

Farnworth asked the all-party committee to address systemic racism in response to Black Lives Matter rallies across Canada following the 2020 death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man who was killed by Minneapolis police.

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