Vancouver Police Department announces official changes to handcuffing policy
Change follows Police Act complaint after wrongful handcuffing of retired judge Selwyn Romilly in 2021
The Vancouver Police Department announced that it has officially updated its handcuffing policy, requiring officers to take into account a person's age, ethnicity, and the seriousness of an alleged incident prior to applying handcuffs.
The announcement follows interim changes to the policy after a May 2021 incident that saw officers detain and handcuff B.C.'s first Black Supreme Court judge, Selwyn Romilly, while looking for another Black man half his age.
The policy change was implemented in October that same year and went into effect on an interim basis, police say.
However, at the time, the Vancouver Police Board said it would be officially approved after recommendations from an investigation into Romilly's case, as well as a B.C. Human Rights Tribunal case involving an Indigenous man and his granddaughter who were wrongfully detained outside a Vancouver bank.
That was settled in September, and an update to the Police Act complaint filed by Romilly made the change official on Friday.
"Retired Justice Romilly signed an informal resolution agreement [on Thursday], which is why we posted this today," said VPD Const. Tania Visintin in an emailed statement Friday.
On May 14, 2021, five Vancouver police officers approached Romilly as he was walking on the Stanley Park seawall and put him in handcuffs, mistaking him for an assault suspect described as dark-skinned and 40 to 50 years old.
The VPD's use of handcuffs had been under scrutiny ever since Heiltsuk man Maxwell Johnson and his granddaughter Torianne were handcuffed outside a bank despite not having committed a crime.
The wrongful handcuffing of the retired judge also sparked questions over the department's treatment of Black people, especially after it emerged that VPD officers had falsely imprisoned Selwyn's brother Valmond in 1974.
Retired Justice Romilly finished law school at the University of British Columbia in 1966, and he was decades older than the suspect being sought by police.
"I have no gun, I don't have anything in my hand or my person. And here you have — at 9:45 a.m., near to Third Beach where you have lots of people — you have a Black guy ... shackled in handcuffs and people passing by. I found that most embarrassing," Romilly told CBC News at the time.
The department's chief, as well as then-mayor Kennedy Stewart, apologized to the judge after the incident.
New policy places onus on officers
The most notable changes to the VPD's handcuffing policy are documentation around safely using handcuffs, and that officers must have lawful authority to use them.
Officers are now told to use their discretion when it comes to the severity of the offence, as well as considering age, Indigeneity, race and disability of the individual.
"A police officer cannot view handcuffing someone who is under arrest, detained, or apprehended as a routine action," reads a statement from the VPD outlining the policy changes.
The policy also places the legal responsibility on individual officers who use force, with the department saying officers cannot rely on an order to avoid legal repercussions.
WATCH | Campaigner says new policy is 'lacklustre':
'A whole lot of nothing'
Tonye Aganaba, a criminalization and policing campaigner with Pivot Legal Society, says the policy is "lacklustre" considering the police board has been working on it since 2020.
"I am surprised to see that what I actually assumed was just common sense is now needing to be written down as policy," said Aganaba.
Because this policy was partially in response to Romilly's wrongful arrest, Aganaba says it shows how important having power is to making concrete change.
"I think it won't make a difference to people who are poor, to people who are already living criminalized lifestyles."
Aganaba says while the policy is a step in the right direction, it does not make any strides toward addressing systemic racism.
"All it does is encourage cops to use their discretion which they already have the power to do ... It's a whole lot of nothing."
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With files from Bethany Lindsay and Michelle Gomez