Ottawa police issue racial profiling policy

Move follows 2009 human rights ruling

By Meghan Hurley, Ottawa Citizen

Almost seven years after six officers were accused of singling out black men during a raid at the Ambassador Bar and Grill, the Ottawa Police Service has announced a racial profiling policy.

The officers were cleared internally after the 2004 raid in which only black men were handcuffed, but the Ontario Human Rights Commission disagreed and forwarded the case to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal. In a 2009 ruling, the tribunal suggested the police create a racial profiling policy.

As a result, Ottawa police officers now cannot pull over a car, conduct an investigation or arrest a person unless they have "reasonable grounds to suspect that the individual has committed or is committing a crime."

Ottawa Police Supt. Ed Keeley said he believed Ottawa police officers already strived for professionalism, but he said the racial profiling policy was necessary.

"The members want the community to be confident that our actions are free of racial bias," Keeley said.

"From that point of view, it's a tool that will help us to ensure that's accomplished," Keeley added.

The purpose of the policy is to define racial profiling, educate officers through an online training program and protect them from unwarranted accusations of misconduct.

Staff Sgt. John Medeiros, in charge of diversity and race relations on the force, said racial profiling could impact the public's confidence in police even if it wasn't intentional.

According to the policy, racial profiling is "largely an unconscious phenomenon" and an officer's intention is not discrimination.

Residents who feel they have been racially profiled may refuse to report a crime or co-operate as a witness to a crime, Medeiros said.

Jordan Noel, who had drug charges withdrawn in July after an Ottawa judge accused the arresting officer of racial profiling, said he felt disrespected on Aug. 10, 2010, when he was pulled over in his mother's Cadillac with his friend, Loik St-Louis.

Police later discovered 13 grams of marijuana, five grams of crack cocaine and a drug scale in the car.

Leo Russomanno, who represented St-Louis, said the new policy was a good first step, but he also said that police need to look at violations of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, not just racial profiling.

"I think that the pervasiveness of this problem in general with the Charter has gone on to suggest that there's a real pattern here," Russomanno said. "It's a pattern of indifference that many officers seem to have and . they ought to be more accountable."

The issue of race has been confronting the Ottawa police in a much more public way since the airing of a cellblock video showing a black Ottawa woman, Stacey Bonds, having her shirt and bra cut off her body by a police officer before she was placed into a cell. Her civil lawyer contends that Bonds was a victim of racial profiling.

mhurley@ottawacitizen.com twitter.com/meghan_hurley


(2011-8-17/The Ottawa Citizen)