The Hamilton Anti-Racism Resource Centre (HARRC) and the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion (HCCI) say the latest use of force data from Hamilton police shows systemic anti-Black racism in policing.
The organizations are calling on police to make recommendations to address the gross over-representation of Black people in use-of-force incidents.
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The community organizations gathered at City Hall Thursday morning all want the same thing, action from Hamilton police and the Police Services Board to address what they say is a clear anti-Black bias in policing.
Hamilton police say understanding why this is happening is complicated and goes beyond just numbers, but they say they are committed to understanding the problem and doing something to address it. They say they continue to hear concerns from Black Hamiltonians about over charging and excessive use of force.
Lyndon George from HARRC says this is nothing new, and creating trust between police, the police services board and Black communities is a key issue requiring a solution.
“We must solve the fundamental problem.”
The Ontario Anti-Racism Data Standards require police to calculate a disparity and disproportionality index for use-of-force incidents.
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That math shows Black people are overrepresented in use of force incidents in Hamilton by nearly three and a half times. No other group is overrepresented.
“They are forced to go through a criminal justice system even when they are victims of police force,” Gachi Issa with the Hamilton Community Legal Clinic says she has worked directly with Black clients who have experienced excessive use of force by police.
“There is a trauma that comes with these individual experiences that no one can describe or even remedy,” Issa said.
The use of force report was presented at Thursday’s police services board meeting. Hamilton police say in the report “Disparity does not equate to discrimination and that it is imperative to understand the drivers of disparity.”
“What the data does show in fact is that this is a complex conversation. Just the raw numbers without context is a dangerous way to interpret them,” Police Chief Frank Bergen says the service doesn’t know what internal and external factors are driving the disparities.
“I absolutely own what is the internal factors and if we’re looking at what is the bias an officer brings to an event, or if we’re looking at some other challenges that we have in those interactions, but I’m not going to be pretending I’m an expert on some of that external factor,” Bergen said.
Former head of HCCI and candidate for Hamilton city council Kojo Damptey says he doesn’t understand how the factors aren’t known.
“How? We’ve been talking about anti-black racism in policing for over a decade.”
Damptey is also concerned by comments made by police services board chair pat mandy to CBC Hamilton on Wednesday.
“The chair has said the collection of this data is harmful,” Damptey said.
The chair appeared to walk back those comments at Thursday’s meeting, saying she believes in the collection of race-based data but has concerns about the methodology behind collecting it.
There were 409 use-of-force reports completed in 2022 representing 291 incidents. The number of reports is above the five-year average, but the number of incidents is below the average. There are more reports than incidents because each officer involved in an incident has to file a separate report.
Hamilton police wants to emphasize that the number of use-of-force incidents represents a very small percentage of the total interactions with the public.
Advocates underscore that for the people involved in these use-of-force incidents, especially in Black communities, the impact on their lives can be anything but small.
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