Black people in Toronto are disproportionately arrested and fatally shot by police, according to a government report released on Monday showing racially charged police violence in Canada’s largest city rivaled that of the US.
Black people are “grossly over-represented” in police actions, comprising nearly a third of criminal charges despite being about 9 percent of the city’s population, said the Ontario Human Rights Commission report.
The highly anticipated report comes in the wake of protests around the world, including in Canada, over the US deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other African-Americans at the hands of police.
“The report’s results are highly disturbing and confirm what black communities have said for decades: that black people bear a disproportionate burden of law enforcement,” said Ena Chadha, interim chief commissioner, in a virtual news conference.
Analyzing data from 2013 to 2017, researchers found the lethal police shooting rate of black people in Toronto was 7.29 per million people each year, compared with an average of 6.99 per million people in the US.
Any perception that racist behavior in Canada’s police was not as serious as in the US is wrong, and the report “compels us to stop perpetuating this myth,” Chadha said.
Charges against black people were more likely to be withdrawn and less likely to result in conviction than those against white people, it said.
“Anti-black racism remains persistent and is not simply a perception of angry and frustrated activists. It manifests very clearly in pretty much every interaction that a civilian can have with police,” said Anthony Morgan, manager of the Toronto city government’s anti-racism unit.
