Victoria City Council’s Motion to Ban Street Checks
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Request to address Council at the July 23 meeting
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Who to send your letter to:
mayor@victoria.ca, malto@victoria.ca, sdubow@victoria.ca, bisitt@victoria.ca, jloveday@victoria.ca, spotts@victoria.ca, cthornton-joe@victoria.ca, gyoung@victoria.ca
Dear Mayor and Council,
I am writing as a resident of Victoria/Esquimalt to support the motion going to Victoria City Council on Thursday July 16 to ban police street checks and carding.
All residents deserve to live free from fear of arbitrary police questioning and detention.
Street checks and carding are an inherently discriminatory and racist practice, whereby people are arbitrarily stopped by police based on their appearance.
We know street checks disproportionately target Black, Indigenous, other people of colour and people who are unhoused. This is the case across Canada, and right here in Victoria. Numerous reports on the Victoria Police Department and data obtained from the VicPD confirm this.
Data from 2017, obtained through a Freedom of Information request, found that VicPD disproportionately street checked Indigenous individuals. According to the information released, 12% of individuals street checked in July 2017 were Indigenous. This is more than double the 5% Indigenous population in Victoria/Esquimalt.
The United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent has found clear evidence of widespread racial profiling in the strategies used by law enforcement in Canada and recommended ending street checks.
In October 2019, the Province of Nova Scotia committed to permanently banning street checks after a legal opinion found the Halifax police practice is illegal.
In a recent campaign by the BCCLA, over 70 organizations co-signed a letter to immediately ban street checks and carding across BC.
Ending the discriminatory practice of police street checks must be a minimum first step as the City of Victoria considers ways to combat systemic racism in our institutions.
Sincerely,
Your name
Your address (if you live in the City of Victoria or Township of Esquimalt)