Nova Scotia RCMP will apologize to African Nova Scotian community for street checks
Apology will be made in 2024 following community consultations
Nova Scotia RCMP will apologize to the African Nova Scotian community next year "for the harm caused by the historical use of street checks," according to a press release issued Tuesday.
In an interview with CBC on Wednesday, Assistant Commissioner Dennis Daley, commanding officer of the Nova Scotia RCMP, said the apology was "long overdue."
"I've done some inquiries as to why the apology wasn't done and in my mind, it was a missed opportunity to do right," Daley said.
Street checks, which were banned in the province four years ago, involved police officers interacting with or observing someone and then recording personal or identifying information about them in a database.
A formal review by criminologist Scot Wortley in 2019 revealed Black people were street checked at a rate six times higher than white people in Halifax. That report was prompted by a 2017 CBC News investigation that showed Black people were three times more likely to be street checked in Halifax than white people.
Halifax Regional Police issued an apology for street checks in 2019.
Community consultations are being organized in African Nova Scotian communities ahead of the apology. One was held Monday night in Gibson Woods, N.S., and another one is scheduled for Sept. 28 in Hammonds Plains. There will be 14 consultations that the RCMP say will help "inform an action plan that will follow the apology."
The consultations are being hosted by locals and attended by members of the Nova Scotia RCMP's senior leadership team, the news release said.
A steering committee was formed "to provide guidance and support." It is made up of RCMP employees and 11 community members.
Vanessa Fells, formerly of the African Nova Scotian Decade for People of African Descent Coalition, is one of the community members on the committee.
Fells said while an apology for street checks is long overdue, it's not necessarily too little, too late.
"I'm a firm believer that an apology without any real actions or policies to change things are just words," she told CBC News in an interview on Tuesday.
Creating an action plan
Fells said the community consultations are about getting information and feedback that will help shape an action plan.
"So the whole purpose is that when the apology happens, the action plan will already be ready. They will already have built one," she said.
Fells says the committee will meet up at least once a month. She said it's very important that people living in the communities where these consultations are taking place show up and let their voices be heard.
Daley said he's hoping to learn more about interactions people have had with police.
"What I have learned to date from inviting young Black males into our steering committee is they do not have positive interactions with police, so it is really my hope this is an opportunity to work toward rebuilding the fractured relationship that exists," Daley said.
"I really want to make this right."
For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here.
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With files from Tom Murphy