Canadian and American policing systems fail to report and solve fewer black victims’ homicides, than whites.
In a world where people of high power and authority claim to keep people in society safe and maintain equality for others. In fact, words are deceiving. Presidents, mayors, city councillors and obviously police officers are people we depend on to ensure they provide the security and equality we need, in order to keep a functioning world. Unfortunately, the police systems in both Canada and United States have continuously failed to protect everyone equally.
Over the past few years international activist groups such as Black Lives Matter, have been demanding for answers regarding the reasons why black males and females have been repeatedly killed in custody by police forces. Many black families and other marginalized communities continue to question the reason behind the death of their loved ones and why their cases are not pursued, like the ones of their white male and female counterparts.
“Police violence disproportionately impacts young people and the young people affected are disproportionately people of colour,” said Anthony Bui of the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. People of black, Hispanic and Native American heritage are disproportionately killed by the police. From 2015 to 2016, Bui’s colleagues found that Native Americans were killed by the police at a rate of 7.8 per one million people, African-Americans died at the hands of police at a rate of 7.2 per million, while whites were killed at a rate of 2.9 per million.
Over recent years, the murder rate amongst black people in the United States has been rising and so have the rate of unsolved cases. An analysis by the Washington Post regarding murders across America, found that when whites are killed the police make an arrest over 60 percent of the time. In contrast, if the victim is of a marginalized group – black or Latino, there are no arrests made.
As a result of failing to solve black homicides, riotous protests held by activist groups such as Black Lives Matter take place in the streets. This also begins to create feelings of uncertainty and distrust amongst black residents towards the police, making them less compliant during investigations according to the New York Times.
“Black life is seen as not as important,” Reverend William Barber, a civil rights leader, told the Washington Post.
Between the years of 2012 through 2017, there’s been 189 gun homicides in Toronto, according to the Toronto Police public safety data portal. In an article by Neil Price in NOW Magazine, Price found that three Toronto Police Service’s police division with large black population, for instance the Jane and Finch area, north of Etobicoke and downtown, have the highest number of unsolved homicides in the city. It is not shocking to know that over 80 per cent of the cases involved males victims. One of several examples of these occurrences include Demal Graham, who was shot dead while watching his daughter play across the street from him, in Scarborough last July. Just like several other suffering families, Graham’s family are left with unanswered questions regarding his death more than a year later.
It is so disheartening that society unceasingly depicts that some lives are worth fighting for than others. The reports and statistics prove that there’s a very valid reason behind the existence of activist groups such as Black Lives Matter; they are needed in crucial times such as these. Not a mother, a father, nor any family relative is deserving of having their loved one killed, most often times innocently,having those murders go unsolved. The policing systems both in Canada and United States, need to improve their services in order to prevent homicide rates from increasing and more importantly decrease the hike of unsolved homicide cases for black people. They do not require anti-racism trainings because, their services are meant to treat other fairly and equally, either way.
Mongu Media Blog 