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Why Che Guevara still lights a revolutionary spark - Stars Insider

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2 days ago - A prominent figure in the Cuban Revolution, he became a martyred hero to generations of leftists worldwide after his execution in 1967 by the ...

Born on June 14, 1928, Che Guevara was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist. A prominent figure in the Cuban Revolution, he became a martyred hero to generations of leftists worldwide after his execution in 1967 by the Bolivian Army.

Already an iconic figure in the 20th century, his stylized visage remains an ubiquitous countercultural symbol of rebellion, leftist radicalism, and anti-imperialism, and his name alone still lights a revolutionary spark in many seeking social and ideological change.

Click through the gallery for an appreciation of the life and times of one of recent history's most idolized and controversial figures.

‘Defunding’ police and funding mental health resources will save lives, experts say

BY LIAM CASEY THE CANADIAN PRESS
Updated June 4, 2020 

VIDEOS https://globalnews.ca/news/7024773/defunding-police-funding-mental-health/

 Advocates say the money saved could go towards programs for racialized communities. Catherine McDonald reports.
TORONTO – The death of a Toronto woman who fell from her 24th-floor balcony while police were in her home has renewed calls for an overhaul of how society deals with people in mental health crises.

Some experts believe “defunding” police – taking some of the taxpayer money going to law enforcement and putting it towards mental health services – is one way to avoid deadly interactions between officers and people struggling with mental illness.

The blowback follows the death last week of Regis Korchinski-Paquet, a 29-year-old woman whose family asked police to take her to a mental health hospital. Police have said they were responding to an assault call, but the family has questioned the role of Toronto officers in her death. The province’s police watchdog has taken over the case.

READ MORE: Regis Korchinski-Paquet’s death reinforces need for major mental health, policing reforms: advocates

“I think it’s unfortunate we’ve come to a place in our society that police become first responders to people who are experiencing a mental health crisis,” said Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Toronto Mississauga.

“What we should do is take back that money, to defund police, and give it over to mental health professionals who are better equipped to help these people.”

He suggested there should be another number to call, rather than 911, for those in crisis, so mental health care workers can intervene, rather than armed officers.

Death of George Floyd renews calls for how law enforcement is funded in Canada 

Toronto police respond to about 30,000 mental health calls every year, out of nearly one million calls that the force responds to, said spokeswoman Meaghan Gray.

The force’s mobile crisis intervention teams, where a trained officer and a mental health nurse respond to those in crisis, attend 6,000 of those calls each year. Those teams do not go to calls where a weapon may be involved.

Lawyer reflects on incidents of anti-black racism, police brutality in Toronto Lawyer reflects on incidents of anti-black racism, police brutality in Toronto

“We have expanded the program over the years and will continue to do so with the resources that are available to us,” Gray said.


“However, it is important to note that all police officers are trained to respond to mental health issues.”

That annual training consists of courses on communication and de-escalation techniques, she said.

“The Toronto Police Service believes that mental health is a complex issue that requires the involvement of multiple entities, including but not limited to community support, public health, and all levels of government, to render any meaningful change,” Gray said.

There have been a number of high-profile cases over the past decade that involved the deaths of people in crises at the hands of police.

Dr. Patrick Baillie, a psychologist and lawyer, has spent 25 years working with Alberta Health Services and the Calgary police and is usually on call 24 hours a day to help the force deal with those in crisis.

Baillie supports the call for more mental health resources to help those in crisis and let police focus on enforcing the law.

“We have made police officers into the people who respond to all sorts of forms of social difficulty,” he said. “At what point do you say, these things aren’t policing?”

READ MORE: Thousands rally in Toronto after death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet

About 10 days ago, Baillie said he received a call from a police negotiator who was stationed outside a man’s home in Calgary with the tactical squad.

A man had been yelling randomly from his porch. When his neighbours told him to shut up, Baillie said, the man made some sort of threat then returned inside. He said police were working on getting a warrant so they could send in the tactical team.

“They tell me the rest of the story: he’s a known police hater, he’s paranoid, …and the police and crisis team has dealt with him before,” he said.

Baillie told police to leave the man alone.

“I said ‘if the neighbours call again, just call me and I’ll go for a drive,'” Baillie said.

No one called. When he checked in on Monday, police told him they went back and said the man was fine and the mental health crisis team took over to help him.

“You’re looking for community support and community intervention rather than law enforcement,” he said.

“If you have a sufficient number of mental health experts available to police, you can have better outcomes.”

READ MORE: Regis Korchinski-Paquet’s family’s interview with SIU on hold after concerns over leaked information

Camille Quenneville, the CEO of the Canadian Mental Health Association’s Ontario division, pointed to two crisis centres in the province that are having promising results.

One is in London, Ont., that operates 24 hours per day, she said.

“This is a place where police can take somebody in crisis,” she said. “They immediately get their mental health needs looked after.”

The centres allow people in crisis to avoid emergency rooms and provide specialized mental health services around the clock.

Ideally, she said, the mental health system needs to be revamped so people aren’t in crisis to begin with. But that would require significant investment in mental health care, she said.

And as people spend months cooped up in their homes due to the COVID-19 pandemic, things will likely get worse, Quenneville said.

“The mental health crisis isn’t looming, it’s here now and we need to act,” she said.

Syrus Marcus Ware, of Black Lives Matter – Toronto, says now is the time to find alternatives to calling police when someone is in the throes of a mental break.

He points to the Gerstein Centre – a 24-hour community-based mental-health crisis centre with its own mobile crisis response team – as one of those alternatives.

“We don’t have to call police if we’re struggling, we can figure out a better way, but we need more of these programs.”

© 2020 The Canadian Press

Approach mental health crises with care, not policing: crisis worker
Rachel Bergen CBC 14/6/2020

© Kerem Yucel/AFP/Getty Images Demonstrators across Canada and the U.S. marched against racism and police brutality following the death of George Floyd. Many people are calling to reallocate money from police departments to social services…

What if a response to a mental health crisis, or a person sleeping in a parkade, was a couple of people in plain clothes asking, "How can we support you?"

Ebony Morgan is a crisis intervention worker with Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets, or CAHOOTS, in Eugene, Ore., which has served its community since 1989.

Through CAHOOTS, medical professional and crisis worker teams provide first aid in case of urgent medical need or psychological crisis. They assess, provide information, referrals, advocate for people and even bring them to another non-profit where they can get additional support.

"We have the trust of our community so when we arrive, we lead with, 'How can we support you? What's going on? What do you need right now,'" Morgan said.

CAHOOTS provides one model of working with — but also independently of — police.
Calls for defunding

The concept of reallocating money from the police has gathered increasing steam in the wake of the protests sparked by the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor by police in the U.S.

In Canada, the role of police in the deaths of Black and Indigenous people who suffered from mental health problems — including Chantel Moore, Regis Korchinski-Paquet, D'Andre Campbell and Machuar Madut — is also coming under increased scrutiny.

Many people have called for defunding the police, in whole or in part, in order to reallocate that money to social service organizations that are better equipped with dealing with the root causes of crime, including poverty, unstable housing, mental health problems and addictions.

Across Canada, city councilors and even Winnipeg's police chief have signalled a willingness for change.

Social agencies have had funding cut back "pretty dramatically" over the last decade by various levels of government, which forces a lot of the work to front-line workers like paramedics and police, Chief Danny Smyth said earlier this week.

He says he'd like to see social services receiving an increase in funding to a sustainable level, then the police service could look at lessening their roles and work instead as supports to those agencies.
CAHOOTS can handle 99.4 per cent of calls

In Oregon, CAHOOTS teams are dispatched by the local police department's non-emergency line and are sometimes sent out with law enforcement. Last year, they were called to deal with crises about 24,000 times and only needed to call 911 for help 150 times.

"That works out to 0.6 per cent. So 99.4 per cent of the time we can handle what we encounter without a police officer," Morgan said.

"The times that we do have to call them in, we're very clear with our clients that that's what the outcome is about to be and the reasoning for it."

The free service in Eugene and neighbouring Springfield has a yearly budget of $1 million, compared to the the local police's budget of $60 million, Morgan says, but it does about 20 per cent of the work.

Staff at CAHOOTS travel across the country teaching people the CAHOOTS model, and so far it's been picked up in Oakland, Cali.; New York City and Denver, Colo.

So far there's been no uptake in Canada, but Morgan thinks that should change.

"I truly believe we should be in every city," she said.

"I think it helps gets rid of some of that stigma around needing help when it's just a couple of people that are walking up to you in their hoodies and jeans, saying 'how are you doing? Can we offer you anything?'"
Mental health ambulance

© Annika Bremer/PAM The Psychiatric Acute Mobility team operate this mental health ambulance in Stockholm, Sweden.Meanwhile, in Stockholm, a mental health ambulance has been lauded by advocates and patients for elevating the status of mental health care.

The program, which started in 2015 as a two-year pilot project, became a permanent fixture in the county's emergency medicine response, according to Andreas Carlborg, the managing director of Northern Stockholm Psychiatry at Stockholm Health Care Services.

"If you had a stroke or a heart attack you'd be treated by nurses in an ambulance ... but if you would have an emergency mental health issue you would probably be dealt with by the police. Now, you would be taken care of by trained nurses in the same way as you would have if you would have a somatic problem," he said

Carlborg says police who aren't trained to deal with these issues can focus on other things, and from a medical perspective, patients get a thorough pre-hospital screening to determine whether they need further care.

Although the program is working well, Carlborg says there's room for improvement. The mental health ambulance is called 15-20 times a day, but with just one vehicle, it isn't possible to see all those patients in a timely manner, so the staff attend to the most serious patients — normally five a day.

"I think there's a general need to increase funding for mental health services in society and definitely in Stockholm, Sweden, as well," he said.

There's keen interest in other jurisdictions, including the U.K. and New Zealand. He says there's a similar program in the Netherlands and Norway as well.
'Great need out there' for specialized workers

Police in Winnipeg say they're working to ensure officers have a better understanding of mental health when responding to calls, but it would be ideal to have more highly-trained mental health and social workers in the field.

"Yeah, specialized people in the field, I'm in support of that all the way. There's great need out there and the more people who are out there the better," said Deputy Chief Gord Perrier.

He told CBC News the police receive mental health training and use tools to assess people's history with police to learn how to approach a particular situation.

Currently there's a program that ensure paramedics are sent to certain 911 calls when they're better suited to the situation, and the Vulnerable Persons Unit pairs a social worker with a police officer when responding to some mental health or addictions calls.

Perrier hopes that unit will expand and that more social service agencies will be open 24 hours for people in crisis.

"People can't control their crisis to be between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m.," he said.

Morgan worries that people only know to call police in an emergency, when that's not always the right choice.

"The cops don't always have to come, but it's the default to call them, and I think that's where even they get frustrated."

If you're experiencing suicidal thoughts or having a mental health crisis, there is help out there. Contact the Manitoba Suicide Prevention and Support Line toll-free at 1-877-435-7170 (1-877-HELP170) or the Kids Help Phone at 1-800-668-6868. You can also text CONNECT to 686868 and get immediate support from a crisis responder through the Crisis Text Line, powered by Kids Help Phone.

Chief, mayor apologize after report finds 2019 Hamilton Pride police actions ‘inadequate’
Don Mitchell CBC 12/6/2020

© Lisa Polewski / 900 CHML Hamilton Police Chief Eric Girt and Hamilton Mayor Fred Eisenberger speak with media following after a police services board meeting on June 17, 2019.Hamilton Ont., police chief Eric Girt apologized to the LGBTQ2 community in a prepared statement during the city's police services board meeting.

The apology comes following an independent review of the Hamilton Police Service's (HPS) actions before and at the city's 2019 Pride festivities in Gage Park.

"As chief, I take full responsibility for what took place at Pride before, during and after," said Girt, "And I do apologize to the community for inadequate planning and preparation for Hamilton Pride 2019."

READ MORE: Independent review says police response to violence at 2019 Hamilton Pride ‘inadequate’

On Thursday, the mayor, chief and a number Hamilton councillors on the board heard Toronto lawyer Scott Bergman read the highlights of his 125-page report, which examined whether the HPS acted too slowly when protesters attacked festival-goers.

The report also suggested the HPS "fell short in its planning and preparation for Pride 2019" with months of miscommunication and a lack of communication with organizers attempting to work out a plan with police for the June event.

"We can do better. We must do better," said Girt.

The chief also apologized for comments made on and around a town hall segment with the Bill Kelly Show on Global News Radio 900 CHML in June 2019 when the chief said police were not invited to the event and that forces remained on the perimeter.

“To many, the Chief’s comments on the Bill Kelly Show seemed to imply that policing of the event was contingent upon event organizers endorsing and welcoming police” Bergman said in his report.

READ MORE: Hamilton LGBTQ2 residents react to Pride 2019 review — ‘We knew that we were right about this’

The Bergman report said the public messaging coming from the HPS after Pride was seen by the LGBTQ2 community as an “abdication of the service’s essential function — to serve and protect.”

"I'm also sorry for statements made during and after the event that created the impression our response would have been different had we been invited," Girt said.

"Hamilton Police Service is committed to ensuring public safety where everyone is respected and protected, regardless of whether we asked or invited to participate."

Mayor Fred Eisenberger also offered up an apology on behalf of the Hamilton police services board, saying they "sincerely and unreservedly" apologize to the LGBTQ2 communities for the events prior to and as they transpired.

He also said the city denounces all organizations, groups or individuals that promote "hate, violence, intolerance, discrimination and hate speech" in the community.

READ MORE: Board approves independent review of police response to Hamilton Pride violence

"The board thanks Mr. Bergman, for his report and accepts his findings and recommendations. We commit to work with the chief senior command of the Hamilton police service to implement all 38 recommendations," said Eisenberger.
Bergman suggests LGBTQ2 liaison officer should be a full-time job

During the board meeting, Ward 6 councillor Tom Jackson asked Bergman to elaborate on his recommendation (#22) which suggested that the city's LGBTQ2 liaison officer Det. Const. Rebecca Moran, hired in mid-February as a “conduit” for community concerns, should be a full-time position.

Bergman said he saw "significant issues" within the Hamilton community and that having an officer doubling the liaison job with a full caseload as a detective gives an "image" that potentially the police service isn't taking LGBTQ2 issues as seriously as it could.
Cultural review and organizational cultural diversity audit

In the report, Bergman also suggested improving ties with the LGBTQ2 community with more "in-depth hands-on" training with the community and undertaking a diversity audit or organizational culture review which he says has been done by other police services across Canada.

"The suggestion is to get a snapshot of where the Police Services Act is currently and then figure out where it wants to go and then assess where it is, you know ... six, eight, 12 months after the fact."
OIPRD report on Hamilton police activities around Pride 2019

Two separate police reviews tied to 2019 Pride activities in Gage Park were on the agenda as part of the Hamilton Police Services (HPS) board meeting on Thursday afternoon.

READ MORE: LGBTQ2 comments made by Hamilton police chief during radio interview dismissed by watchdog

The other report was submitted to the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD) by Hamilton police which was an internal review that concluded that complaints against the HPS were "thoroughly" investigated and found to be "unsubstantiated."

The 110-page report, completed by an HPS staff sergeant in November centred around three reported service complaints. The complaints allege that police failed to properly plan for the Pride event at Gage Park, that officers took too long to respond to the disturbance among "attendees and protesters" and that police failed to arrest protesters.

After interviewing the complainants, witnesses and officers involved, an investigator was "satisfied" with the operational plan, saying it "reflected the most current information and intelligence" available to officers at the time.

The review also said that police followed proper response protocol in deploying 48 officers within a half-hour of being alerted about a confrontation at Gage Park.

Bergman's conclusions in the report were based on interviews with 42 community members, 24 HPS officers and civilian staff as well as submissions from a wide range of individuals and local news stories.

Mayor Eisenberger said recommendations from the report will be addressed at a board meeting in September.

Hamilton, Ontario to consider calls to defund police despite skepticism from board

Don Mitchell 13/6/2020
© Lisa Polewski / Global News Activists rally in Gore Park in Hamilton, Ont. on June 1, 2020, a week after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Hamilton's police services board has agreed to look at a potential 20 per cent defunding of local police following protests across Canada and the U.S. by supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement in connection with the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.


City councillor and police services board member Chad Collins said the move was in response to the city's inbox being "inundated" by emails from a number of Hamiltonians asking for the redirection of funds to social programs.

"I think this motion will help in responding to the messages that we've received as a board and as a council," said Ward 5 rep Collins who admittedly was less than supportive of the possibility, saying his constituents want "more policing, not less."

READ MORE: ‘They’re targeting us’: Why some advocates want to defund Canadian police

"To me, it means less resources for police, which will ultimately lead to less police officers. And it's become quite obvious that the defund the police campaign, whether it's here or elsewhere, is an attempt essentially to neuter the police," Collins said.

A 20 per cent cut would equate to about a $34 million reduction in the city's current policing budget of $171 million, according to the board.

On June 2, a list of demands was issued by organizers of a series of virtual protests, live-streamed from Toronto’s Black Lives Matter Twitter account, with some filmed from various locations across Hamilton.

Gachi Issa, one of the protest organizers, told Global News that anti-Black racism is pervasive in Hamilton and needs to be addressed by elected officials in the city.

“It not only happens in Canada, but it happens in our city,” said Issa during an interview on Global News Radio 900 CHML’s Bill Kelly Show.

“We should focus on it and we should work toward a more just society for Black and racialized people. And that means defunding the police, that means allocating these resources back into the community.”

READ MORE: ‘Defunding’ police and funding mental health resources will save lives, experts say

Dr. Greg Brown, from the department of sociology and anthropology and legal studies at Carleton University, says the current ideology of defunding is a theory that potential deadly interactions between officers and people can be avoided through preventive investments in communities, mental health services, and social service programs.

"I think it's sort of coalescing is around a definition of the police maybe eliminating or transferring some of the current work that they do, outside of core law enforcement, responding to citizens in distress, nine when one type of calls, and downloading that service onto another," said Brown.

Hamilton Police Association president Clint Twolan says 89 percent of the city's police budget goes to staffing costs and that a 20 percent cut in the budget means a significant decrease in staffing.

Twolan says he doesn't believe that redirecting policing funds will remove police from dealing with confrontation in a given community saying officers are a downstream institution that deals with the social issues that have come as a result of shortcomings of institutions above them.

"Whether it's health care, whether it's mental health, whether it's education or socio-economic issues involving housing and drug addiction, those kinds of things. We are the ones who we are the catch basins, and we deal with those people," said Twolen.

READ MORE: Activists call for defunding of police to address anti-Black racism in Hamilton

Mayor Fred Eisenberger concurs with Twolen's assessment, saying that a lot of the "social ills" in society have ultimately landed on police.

"It's a very complex issue that has many layers," said Eisenberger.

"Certainly social services and supports that are out there being delivered by federal and provincial governments have been and continue to be inadequate to serve the very people that are in need those resources and services more than ever."

— With files from Lisa Polewski

Activists call for defunding of police to address anti-Black racism in Hamilton

BY LISA POLEWSKI 900 CHML Posted June 4, 2020
 

A group of Hamilton activists took over Toronto's Black Lives Matter Twitter account on Tuesday to call for changes to address anti-Black racism in the city, including defunding the Hamilton Police Service. (@BLM_TO on Twitter)

A call from local activists to defund the Hamilton Police Service is the latest addition to a growing conversation about anti-Black racism in policing.

That call was among a list of demands issued by organizers of a series of virtual protests, which were live-streamed from Toronto’s Black Lives Matter Twitter account on Tuesday and filmed from various locations across Hamilton.

READ MORE: Toronto lawyer reflects on local incidents of anti-Black racism, police brutality

Gachi Issa, one of the organizers of the protest, said anti-Black racism is pervasive in Hamilton and needs to be addressed by elected officials in the city.

“It not only happens in Canada, but it happens in our city,” said Issa during an interview on Global News Radio 900 CHML’s Bill Kelly Show. “We should focus on it and we should work toward a more just society for Black and racialized people. And that means defunding the police, that means allocating these resources back into the community.”
https://t.co/0NQqZDFOJ0
— Black Lives Matter — Toronto (@BLM_TO) June 2, 2020

Issa and the other activists argue that some of the money that the city has dedicated to the police budget — which is $172 million for 2020 — could be better spent if it were used to fund anti-racism initiatives and social programs, including food security and housing.

“We have to question if police actually keep us safe,” said Issa. “Because I would say Black and Indigenous and people of colour don’t feel safe around police. So who are they really serving? Not us.”

READ MORE: ‘We have to stand up’: 10-year-old Ontario boy releases poignant video on racism, George Floyd

Greg Dongen, a student from Bernie Custis High School, was among those who appeared in the live-streams. He said the demands listed in those videos are not issues that sprung up overnight, but have been growing in importance for young racialized people for a long time.

“These demands have been long in the works,” said Dongen. “I feel like the support we are getting from the community — we’ve been getting the signatures on our petitions, as well as people just trying to reach out and figure out how they can support — and I feel like that in itself is helping the community come together behind the demands.”
2:23George Floyd death: Freeland says ‘there can’t be any tolerance for racism or bias’ in Canadian police forces George Floyd death: Freeland says ‘there can’t be any tolerance for racism or bias’ in Canadian police forces

The group’s live-streamed protests also included demands for the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board to end its program with police that puts officers in Hamilton high schools, which they say disproportionately target Black and racialized students, and for the province to restructure the Special Investigations Unit, which is in the midst of investigating the death of a Black woman during an interaction with Toronto police.

READ MORE: Regis Korchinski-Paquet’s death reinforces need for major mental health, policing reforms: advocates

Mouna Bile, a social worker with the Hamilton Community Legal Clinic, said the city has the power to appoint Black people in leadership positions, including the Hamilton Police Services Board, which has been criticized for a lack of diversity.

“We need folks that understand — through not only experience — but experts that can apply an anti-Black racism lens in the way that these officers operate, in the ways that they respond to mental health crises,” said Bile.

“I think there are opportunities where the city can certainly take a leadership role, and by taking that first step — that meaningful first step — it will hopefully influence other institutions in doing the same.”

Bile said she can understand why marginalized people are frustrated and calling for funding to be distributed in a different way, simply because there are situations that police may not be trained to handle.

“The police aren’t social workers. The police are not counselors. We can use our funds, our money, our taxpaying dollars toward these social services and programs that will actually support and help and use trained experts to deal with these issues, as opposed to calling an officer to respond to them at all times. Officers are not meant to deal with all of the elements of our society.”

In an emailed statement to Global News, Hamilton police spokesperson Jackie Penman said the service “remains committed to growing with, and learning from, all of our communities.”

“We know we are not perfect and there is much work to do,” the statement from Penman reads. “We appreciate the issues raised by Black Lives Matter and look forward to engaging in an open and transparent dialogue.”

READ MORE: Bill Kelly: Are we part of the problem or part of the solution?

Hamilton Mayor Fred Eisenberger, who is chair of the city’s police services board, also issued a statement on anti-Black racism on Wednesday.

“I understand that I will never experience the pain and injustice experienced by Black people,” the statement said. “I will, however, continue to further educate myself on the Black Lives Matter movement and reflect on what I, as an individual, can do to work better together with our Black-led community organizations.”

“My role as Chair of the Hamilton Police Services Board enables me to provide guidance and recommendations to our police force. I am committed to having these conversations on how we can continue to serve and protect all members of our City equitably and respectfully.”

© 2020 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

‘They’re targeting us’: Why some advocates want to defund Canadian police


BY OLIVIA BOWDEN AND MEGHAN COLLIE GLOBAL NEWS
Updated June 8, 2020 

VIDEO 

https://globalnews.ca/news/7025246/defunding-police-in-canada/

AUDIO AT THE END

 In Toronto, thousands rallied to honour 29-year-old Regis Korchinski-Paquet, a Black and Indigenous woman who fell to her death off her apartment's 24th-floor balcony during an interaction with police

In recent days, protests against anti-Black racism and police brutality have erupted across the U.S. and Canada in response to the deaths of Black Americans George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor.

Now, some advocates are calling for police forces to be defunded and taxpayer money to be redirected — a conversation that is also happening in Canada, stemming from the death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet, a 29-year-old Black and Indigenous woman who fell from her Toronto apartment balcony after police entered the unit.

Police claim they were responding to a reported assault, but the family has questioned the role of the police in her death. The Special Investigations Unit, Ontario’s police watchdog, is currently investigating.

READ MORE: Advocates call plan to boost Black history B.C. school curriculum ‘long overdue’

Defunding the police means redirecting the budget for Canada’s police forces to other services that focus on social supports, mental health and even spaces like transit, said Sandy Hudson, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter Toronto and a law student at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“There’s no reason why we can’t start a service that is another emergency response service where people can call a number and have someone who is trained in de-escalation,” Hudson said.

Now, with more incidents of police brutality in the news, calls for defunding the police both in the U.S. and Canada are louder than ever.
The history of police in Canada

This is hardly the first time defunding the police has been talked about in Canada, experts told Global News.

Examining the way police uphold and participate in anti-Black racism and violence towards Black and Indigenous communities in Canada has been a discussion for decades, said Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, a sociology professor at the University of Toronto Mississauga.

“Part of it is discrimination within policing — both implicit and explicit — but then the other parts of it are how the police operate and what we’re asking police to do,” he said.

The origins of policing in the southern United States were based on preserving the slavery system, as Time magazine reports, and police were primarily tasked with being “slave patrols” to prevent Black slaves from escaping. After the Civil War ended, these patrols still existed to uphold segregation and discrimination towards Black people.

Police in Canada were historically also tasked with “clearing the land” to steal the property of Indigenous Peoples, said Hudson.

“Those two focuses of the police, Indigenous and Black people, controlling us … there’s a through line to today and how the police interact with our communities,” she said

READ MORE: The RCMP was created to control Indigenous people. Can the relationship be reset?

Policing has been used to enforce the dominant narrative in Canada, which is colonization, said Alicia Boatswain-Kyte, a social work professor at McGill University whose research examines systemic oppression.

“These institutions are a product of (colonialism); they stem from that,” she said. “Right now we’re seeing what it looks like at this stage … and it gets manifested in the form of police brutality.”
Mental health, homelessness and other social issues

Experts are concerned that police in Canada are tasked with issues related to poverty, mental health and homelessness, and they are “ill-equipped and an inappropriate resource to be addressing those issues,” Owusu-Bempah said.

A 2018 report on racial profiling by the Ontario Human Rights Commission found that a Black person was 20 times more likely than a white person to be involved in a fatal shooting by Toronto police. The report was the result of an inquiry launched after Andrew Loku, a father of five who was experiencing mental health issues, died after being shot by police.

A coroner’s inquest ruled that Loku’s death was the result of a homicide and recommended that police are better trained if they are to deal with mental health calls.

“The violence we see inflicted by the police are often happening with people who are having a mental health crisis,” said Hudson.

Shifting the money to fund organizations that understand the nuances of mental health issues and the challenges faced by racialized communities would be a better use of taxpayers’ money, she said.

 How racism affects Black mental health

Out of the nearly one million calls the force responds to, Toronto police respond to about 30,000 mental health calls every year, spokeswoman Meaghan Gray told the Canadian Press.

The force’s mobile crisis intervention teams ⁠— which include a trained officer and a mental health nurse ⁠— attend only 6,000 of those calls each year because they do not go to calls where a weapon may be involved.

Annual training for the force includes courses on communication and deescalation techniques, said Gray.

“The Toronto Police Service believes that mental health is a complex issue that requires the involvement of multiple entities, including but not limited to community support, public health, and all levels of government, to render any meaningful change,” she said.

READ MORE: Marches in Toronto, Ottawa to honour Black lives lost at hands of police officers

It would be better if a mental health nurse or some other trained expert was always present, Boatswain-Kyte said.

“Are they (police) really the ones that are best suited?” she said.

“Social workers, for instance, go to school to understand how to form relationships, to understand how people are excluded and what factors contribute to their exclusion.”

READ MORE: George Floyd death draws scruitiny on police use of force. What’s Canada’s protocol?

By making police the body available to provide help in these situations, Boatswain-Kyte said, it sends a message that people with those health issues aren’t welcome in our society.“Regardless of the amount of training … the implicit bias as a result of what (police) have been socialized to believe and understand about the ‘dangers’ of Black and brown bodies is going to influence them at the time when they have to make a decision.”  DISARM THE POLICE!

Boatswain-Kyte points to a study published in May from Columbia University that found there is “no evidence that enhanced police training focused on mental health crises” can reduce fatal shootings towards those having a mental health crisis, or racialized people in general.
By the numbers

In Toronto, the largest portion of a resident’s property tax bill — around $700 out of an average bill of $3,020 — goes to the Toronto Police Service. The lowest portion of property taxes goes to children’s services, Toronto employment and social services and economic development and culture.

The situation is similar elsewhere in the country, as the Vancouver police budget has grown by more than $100 million in the last decade, representing about one-fifth of the city’s $1.6-billion 2020 operating budget.

Backlash mounting over Premier Doug Ford’s comments on racism in Canada Backlash mounting over Premier Doug Ford’s comments on racism in CanadaA 2014 report published by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute found that policing budgets in Canada had doubled compared to the GDP since 2004, even though the public calls to police have “remained stable.”

“Police associations have been happy to stoke public fears about safety, but the correlation between numbers of officers, crime rates and response times has long been shown to be spurious,” the report said, authored by Christian Leuprecht, a political science professor at Queen’s University and Royal Military College.

Police work that is essentially unrelated to policing could be done by other groups, Leuprecht explains.

Moving forward

Owusu-Bempah is calling on city mayors like Toronto Mayor John Tory to review which roles and functions we want the police to provide and which should be provided by other agencies.

“Then we need a lot of (the) funding currently spent on police … given to other organizations” that are better equipped to help with issues like homelessness and mental illness, he said.

Given the recent incidents of anti-Black racism and brutality perpetuated by police, Hudson says defunding the police would also give agency and safety to Black communities.

READ MORE: George Floyd’s death still a homicide despite evidence of medical issues: experts

“How could the body that is ostensibly meant to provide safety for our communities … be one of the reasons we keep getting hurt?” Hudson said.

“Most people don’t have to interact with police at all … but for our communities, they’re targeting us.

“We just want to live like everybody else.”


Olivia.Bowden@globalnews.ca
© 2020 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Chief Allan Adam arrest: Cameras not enough to solve RCMP systemic racism, experts say

THE RCMP ARE A MILITARY OCCUPATIONAL FORCE, THAT PROVIDED ACCESS TO INDIAN LANDS WEST OF THE OTTAWA VALLEY, FOR THE RAILROADS. 

SEE MY  http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2005/07/rebel-yell.html

Beatrice Britneff
13/6/2020

© RCMP dashcam video, supllied by Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation The Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation released a nearly 12-minute long RCMP dashcam video on Thursday showing the violent arrest of Chief Allen Adam and the moments leading…

Dashcam footage of the RCMP's arrest of Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Chief Allan Adam in Alberta shows that capturing such incidents on camera isn't enough to address issues of systemic racism in the policing of Indigenous communities in Canada, experts say.

Chief Adam was arrested outside a casino in Fort McMurray, Alta., by RCMP officers early on March 10. A RCMP dashboard camera recorded the events and the footage was filed as a court exhibit on Thursday.

READ MORE: Alberta RCMP dashcam video shows violent arrest of First Nation chief, moments leading up to it

The nearly 12-minute video shows the back-and-forth between Adam and an RCMP officer leading up to the arrest, which culminated with a second police officer running into view and tackling Adam to the ground.

"It's horrific and it's barbaric," said Lori Campbell, a two-spirit Cree/Métis and director of the Waterloo Indigenous Students Centre.

Before the release of the video, Adam had held a news conference to publicize his arrest — the latest in a number of violent police confrontations with Indigenous people that came to light in recent weeks.

READ MORE: Chantel Moore’s death prompts renewed calls for New Brunswick police watchdog

On Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he wants police to be equipped with body-worn cameras to help overcome what he said was public distrust in law enforcement.

He added he had raised the issue with RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki.

Lucki later announced she would "engage in work and discussion… on a broader rollout of body-worn cameras" to in an effort to increase trust between the national police force and the communities it serves, as well as boost accountability and transparency.

READ MORE: RCMP chief to seek ‘broader rollout’ of body cameras in wake of anti-racism protests


Chad Haggarty served for 17 years in the RCMP in Alberta and now works as a student-at-law in criminal defence in Calgary — the only city in Canada to have equipped all its front-line officers with body cameras.

From a legal perspective, he said body-worn cameras are "indispensable" and "the best tool" the public has right now to ensure appropriate conduct by police officers.

But he added those cameras may not prevent improper conduct from occurring.

"It may not stop them from the terrible things that they're going to do, but it certainly allows us to go back and examine the propriety of their actions," he said.

Campbell said that's exactly what she took away from watching the footage of Adam's arrest, saying the presence of the dashcam didn't "stop the outcome of what occurred."

"It doesn't matter whether there's cameras there or not," she told Global News.

READ MORE: Police body cameras in Canada — How common are they and do they reduce excessive force?

Campbell argued the cameras haven't been proven to accomplish what many advocates originally thought they would — which was to serve as a deterrent. Several studies conducted on use of body-cameras have concluded the cameras have had no measurable impact on police behaviour, but others have found some benefit.

"For police services now who haven't been using the body cameras in Canada to decide that that is going to be their next proactive reform decision to make and to spend money on, we already know it's not working, so they don't need to do that," Campbell argued.

"All it is doing is filming essentially this violence porn against Black and brown people that people are now watching. And every time we see it, it's devastating and trauma-inducing."

In recent weeks, video footage also circulated of an RCMP officer hitting an Inuk man with the door of a moving truck during an arrest in Nunavut. Days later, Chantel Moore, an Indigenous woman from B.C., was shot dead by police in Edmundston, N.B.
RCMP created to control Indigenous people

The RCMP as an institution was never built to keep Indigenous communities safe, Campbell said. Rather, it was used to confine Indigenous peoples on reserves and clear the way for western settlement.

Canada's first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, got the idea for the Mounties from the Royal Irish Constabulary, a paramilitary police force the British created to keep the Irish under control.

"He decided that instead of it being too expensive to send military out west, that he would form his own essentially Royal Irish Constabulary, but he called it the North-West Mounted Police," Campbell said.

"He enlisted 200 men and sent them out west to contain the Indigenous peoples and to surveil them and to protect settlers from Indigenous people.

"Then, of course, later that becomes the RCMP and that is still who polices and surveils and confines us in our communities."

During the years residential schools were in operation, it was RCMP officers who were tasked with going into Indigenous communities and forcefully removing the children, added Gabrielle Lindstrom, an assistant professor in Indigenous Studies with Mont Royal University's department of humanity.

"The RCMP are definitely part of the colonial legacy and play a huge role in that. And they continue to play a huge role in that today," Lindstrom said.

Because of this history, many Indigenous people grew up fearing police and have a visceral reaction to the sight of law enforcement, said Reuben Breaker, an elected councillor with the Siksika Nation, east of Calgary.

"I don't drink or do drugs or anything like that, but nonetheless, the image of a police car... there's automatic fear and guilt because that's what we associate with the RCMP," he said on Friday.

"In our language, they're called Inakiikowan. That means people that capture."

Breaker told Global News seeing the video of Adam's arrest "automatically brings anger" to Indigenous people.

"It's so common," he said, speaking from Strathmore, Alta.

"That has happened in many communities for many, many years. But it just has gone unreported or unresolved."

READ MORE: Canada’s prison watchdog disturbed by ‘Indigenization’ of correctional system

Today, Indigenous people are over-represented in Canada's corrections system. The federal prison ombudsman sounded the alarm about this earlier this year, warning that the proportion of Indigenous people in federal custody had reached a record high of more than 30 per cent due to entrenched imbalances.

After backlash, RCMP acknowledges systemic racism

As outrage mounts across Canada about the treatment on Indigenous people, one first step is for RCMP leadership to acknowledge there is systemic racism within the national police force, Campbell and Haggerty argued.

The RCMP's deputy commissioner in Alberta was criticized this week for denying systemic racism existing in the force. In a later interview with Global News, Lucki, for her part, said she believes there is "unconscious bias" among members in the police force but that she's "struggling" with the definition of systemic racism and how that applies to the institution of the RCMP.

She walked back those statements on Friday afternoon, after Trudeau contradicted her and others criticized her comments.

"I did acknowledge that we, like others, have racism in our organization, but I did not say definitively that systemic racism exists in the RCMP. I should have," she wrote.

"As many have said, I do know that systemic racism is part of every institution, the RCMP included. "Throughout our history and today, we have not always treated racialized and Indigenous people fairly."

RCMP media relations declined Global News' request for an interview with Commissioner Lucki about the released video of Adam's arrest on Friday.

The deputy commissioner in Alberta also backpedalled on his comments in a press conference late Friday.
Cultural, structural changes needed in RCMP, experts argue

After an acknowledgement, "changing the behaviour of race-based policing is going to require ... a cultural shift within the RCMP," Haggarty argued.

Accomplishing that requires concrete action, he and Campbell agreed.

In the immediate future, Campbell said a good place to start would be the release of the delayed federal action plan, promised in response to the final report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

That report stated: "The RCMP have not proven to Canada that they are capable of holding themselves to account."

But given the foundations on which the RCMP was built, Campbell is not optimistic the massive police service can be appropriately reformed and instead favours defunding the force and reallocating the resources.

Instead of investing in body cameras, Campbell argued, "take that money and invest it in things like social services, child services, community programming, mental health supports, social workers."

In her statement on Friday, Lucki said the RCMP is focused on "thoughtful action."

"We now have the opportunity to lead positive change on this critical issue. It is time to double down on these efforts -- there is so much more to do," she said.

"There is no one answer, no single solution, no one approach. It is the ongoing commitment to work and continue to learn that will help us make real progress and I am motivated and determined to make change."

-- With files from Global News' Amanda Connolly, Heather Yourex-West, Jane Gerster, Mercedes Stephenson, Phil Heidenreich the Canadian Press and Reuters

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/06/this-happened-in-alberta-premier-kenney.html