Senator calls for staff training after Indigenous grandfather, 12-year-old wrongfully handcuffed at B.C. bank
'A middle class white guy from suburban Vancouver would not have been put into handcuffs'
Indigenous Canadian Sen. Murray Sinclair is no stranger to racism and after hearing a grandfather and his 12-year-old granddaughter were wrongfully removed from a Vancouver bank by police says businesses must provide better training to staff to prevent racial profiling.
Just before Christmas, Maxwell Johnson and his granddaughter were detained at a downtown Bank of Montreal (BMO) branch while attempting to open an account for the pre-teen. An employee questioned the pair's identification, which included Indian Status cards.
Police were called.
Johnson says he was racially profiled. BMO has since apologized.
"I don't doubt for a moment that if that was not an Indigenous person, if that was a middle-class white guy from suburban Vancouver, they would not have been put into handcuffs if there was confusion over identification at a bank," said Sinclair Friday on CBC's The Early Edition.
Sinclair said the onus is on business owners and institutions to adequately train employees who interact with the public not to automatically profile people of colour as suspicious.
"A lot of people, especially police officers, are trained to believe they have to go with their gut instinct," said Sinclair. "In many cases, those feelings and those instincts are founded in racism."
According to the Vancouver Police Department, the officers that handcuffed the pair had taken cultural competency training.
When it comes to BMO's role in the incident, Sinclair says establishing proper policies and ensuring bank staff are adequately trained could prevent a similar situation from happening again.
"It's really a question of what kind of training did that person receive and what they were told they needed to watch out for," said Sinclair.
And it's not just bank tellers Sinclair says could use training.
"When you're walking through a store, a person of colour generally is the first person targeted by security," said Sinclair.
An Indigenous man and his 12-year-old granddaughter were placed in handcuffs when trying to open an account at a Vancouver bank. @SenSincmurrSinclair says racial profiling is common and shares his own story of being profiled by an emergency room doctor... <a href="https://t.co/yPL6irzkYv">pic.twitter.com/yPL6irzkYv</a>
—@CBCEarlyEditionThe former judge said on more than one occasion he has been asked by store security to show a receipt or open his bag for inspection, while people who are not visible minorities walk past him.
"You need to be trained if one of the things that they're asking of you in your place of employment is to be on the lookout for people who are going to be committing or have committed, criminal offences," said Sinclair.
B.C. Assembly of First Nations Regional Chief Terry Teegee told CBC the AFN is pushing for training for the bank employees that decided to call the police.
This is incredibly ridiculous to hear about.<br><br>The AFN has reached out to <a href="https://twitter.com/BMO?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BMO</a> to express our deep disappointment and the need to set better standards for their employees. I urge <a href="https://twitter.com/BMO?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BMO</a> to publicly state what they plan to do to address this to ensure it doesn't happen again. <a href="https://t.co/siEqBjySwq">https://t.co/siEqBjySwq</a>
—@perrybellegardeWe value our long and special relationship with Indigenous communities. Recently, an incident occurred that does not reflect us at our best. We deeply regret this and unequivocally apologize to all.
—@BMOIn a statement, BMO apologized for the incident saying it values its "long and special relationship with Indigenous communities.'
Johnson said he is speaking to a lawyer about how to proceed with a human rights case.
To hear the complete interview with Murray Sinclair on The Early Edition, tap the audio link below:
With files from Angela Sterritt and The Early Edition