Transcript
Speaker: I'm Jane Williams, this is the Red Eye Podcast. In our show today, Laurentism talks with Sandy Hudson, co -founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto, about the need to defund the police.
Speaker: The police killing of George Floyd captured on video has ignited a global uprising against racist police violence and the systemic oppression of black people. In tandem with Black Lives Matter protests around the world, activists have called for defending the police.
Speaker: In Canada, Black and Indigenous activists have worked long and hard to raise this issue, and suddenly we have started to see the idea of defunding the police gaining traction and support. Here in Vancouver, where policing consumes over a fifth of the city budget, thousands have written to City Council calling to defund police.
Speaker: Black Lives Matter activist, Sandy Hudson, says the call to defund demands that we divest funding from police services and invest in other programs that are better equipped to deliver the safety and security needs of our society. Sandy Hudson co -founded Black Lives Matter Toronto and is vice chair of the Black Legal Action Centre and a UCLA law student. She also produces a podcast with Nora Loretto called Sandy and Nora Talk Politics. Hello, Sandy.
Speaker: Hi, how are you? I'm good and it's great to talk to you. Great to talk to you too. Thanks for having me on. I think it's fair to say that a lot of people believe that the police are there to protect them and to prevent violence. Where does that belief fall apart for black folks, indigenous folks, poor folks, queer folks?
Speaker: Well, I actually think that that belief falls apart for most people. Significantly, as you state, it's important to think about how it falls apart for particular communities, certainly. But I don't want to get lost in only focusing on that, because I do think that the police are detrimental to all of society.
Speaker: But for Black folks and Indigenous folks, certainly, the police kill us. They inflict violence on our communities. Just this morning, I was sent another video of police violence in Ajax, which is a suburb of Toronto.
Speaker: an elderly black couple exiting a hospital were subject to police brutality. You know, you can't hear anything on the tape, but you see the police approach them. There's clearly some sort of argument. And then they start beating on these elderly people who are older than 60 years old to the point of
Speaker: they fell unconscious. And the lawyer who put out this video said that the police charged them, the judge threw it out, and they haven't been able to get any accountability from this. And this is a case where someone doesn't die. Normally, we only hear about the cases where people die. And quite frankly, the numbers are staggering in Toronto.
Speaker: Black people are 20 times more likely to be killed by police. And we only know that because the Human Rights Commission collected that data because the police in the province refused to collect data like that here in Canada. So, you know, it's a similar situation for Indigenous people as well. We've heard of, you know, Chantal Moore and Rodney Levi this week and who were killed by police, both killed by police. And this can't be allowed to continue.
Speaker: I think as well you mentioned indigenous folks we've seen a long history and particularly the sort of militarized invasion on Wet'suwet 'en territory as well. That's right and I think that that's an important part of the discussion that hasn't really been talked about in the last couple weeks is the way that the police actually infringe on all sorts of different rights that we should have in our society certainly
Speaker: These are land defenders that we're referring to and would sow it in. But even in my work as a BLM activist in Toronto, the police attacked us multiple times during the course of us engaging in peaceful protests and peaceful demonstrations, simply asking for them not to kill us. And at least at one of those times, they stole
Speaker: mobility equipment that someone who had a disability needed to move around and inflicted violence upon us while children were in the area, dragging children's mothers and fathers on the floor and beating them while in the presence of their children. When we were engaged in a peaceful protest,
Speaker: And there was no escalation. They just attacked. And so it was, you know, this is just one of the ways that police fail us because in doing those things, who were they protecting? Who were they providing safety for? What could defunding the police look like? Take that apart for us a bit.
Speaker: Sure, it could look like so many things. I think one of the things that people first need to understand, I mean, I just got these numbers yesterday from a researcher, is that Stats Canada estimates that up to 80 % of police calls are actually non -criminal in nature.
Speaker: They are mostly calls like an alarm has gone off or people are calling about a cat up in the tree or maybe it's a medical emergency and so somebody else could show up. A significant number of those calls are about mental health emergencies. One of the ways that we can defund the police is it's like, okay, well, if they're not even dealing with the things that we are told they're dealing with through
Speaker: the kind of propaganda that we see on television, the types of things that we imagine cops do. And what they're actually doing is attending mostly to things like mental health crises. We have lots of research in this country to show that one, police officers are more likely to kill someone who has a mental health crisis. They're more likely to use lethal force.
Speaker: And two, that they are terrible at providing the sorts of support people who are experiencing a mental health crisis need. And so why would we continue to rely on the police service to provide emergency services for people who are experiencing a mental health crisis when they are so
Speaker: badly failing at doing that. Instead, what we could do is defund the police, put that money into a new service that provides emergency health and social supports that people need when they are experiencing a mental health crisis. And that's just one example of how we could approach this.
Speaker: What about the, I guess, police services themselves? Do you think that it's possible to reform them? I mean, people talk about cultural sensitivity training and implicit bias training. Is that like in your mind, is that even a reality?
Speaker: Uh, no, it absolutely is not. And here's why. I know that that might sound confusing to people, but here's the thing. We've been trying that for decades. For decades, the police have already recognized that this is a problem. You know, like there's been so many different reports and studies done and recommendations. And so they have been going, undergoing implicit bias training. They have
Speaker: tried training, new types of training that would support some sort of model of community policing. It has absolutely no impact
Speaker: on the police's likelihood to kill a Black person or kill an Indigenous person where they would not do so for non -Black and non -Indigenous people. And so for me, it's like if we know that this doesn't work, it hasn't worked here, it doesn't work in other jurisdictions,
Speaker: Why are we still trying to do that? I mean, aren't our lives worth exploring a better service that could help not only to stave off the fatal interactions that we continue to have with the police, but to provide a better service for everyone who needs emergency services in our communities?
Speaker: I think there's probably a difference between someone who has a certain level of privilege and perhaps is wider in another privileged position in terms of what they think of the police providing
Speaker: security for them and someone who is from a group that has constantly been targeted by police as the problem. And I'm wondering, maybe it's too big a question to ask, how can we kind of bridge that or shake that up in some way so that all of our security becomes important?
Speaker: Well, the number one thing to realize there is that for the folks who typically think, you know, here are the police, they provide us safety, they provide us security, we need them, that is a theoretical position. It's not based off of any sort of interaction with the police. It is just based on the idea that you've been told your entire life, I can call the police if something goes wrong, and they will take care of me. It's theoretical.
Speaker: For those of us who are saying, hey, the police are really, really bad and we need to defund them and think of other ways of providing safety and security for our society, our interactions with police
Speaker: are not theoretical. They happen every day. They are in our community. They target us. They stop us on the street. They continue to try to control our movements. And they inflict violence on us and kill us. And so our interactions with the police are not a part of a theoretical exercise where we think that we have this place to call.
Speaker: in the event that something goes wrong. In fact, it's based on very real interactions that consistently show that the police are an ineffective force and also a very violent force. For those people who have never had to call the police for a whole host of different issues, they might be surprised to know that
Speaker: For issues like, for example, burglary or theft, the police are actually not that helpful. Stats can numbers show us that the police are only able to clear, and I'll explain what that word means in a moment, less than 16 % of crimes like theft and burglary.
Speaker: So even there, people might be surprised to learn that the police don't do a very good job for us. What it means to clear a case
Speaker: is that the police eventually lay a charge. It doesn't even mean that they solve the case. It means that they lay a charge. And there's some evidence to suggest that police officers or police departments are likely to lay a charge even if it's not warranted in order to get those numbers up. So that's a kind of a high number, less than 16 % of burglaries and thefts solved. Your insurance company is more helpful to you in that situation. And if the police,
Speaker: aren't good at investigating, providing investigatory services where we need them. Well, why don't we create another body that isn't connected to this institution that has a history of anti -indigeneity and a history of anti -Blackness, and we'll take our concerns seriously and investigate where we need them to investigate.
Speaker: What do you make up spokespeople for the RCMP and other police forces saying racism is in society, so therefore police are racist, implying that they are no more racist than an arm? I'm thinking of RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucky denying systemic racism in the force.
Speaker: I mean, one, to first deny systemic racism and then say that there is racism everywhere and as a result, we're racist is just a weird confluence of words that are not consistent with a singular idea. She seems to be flailing in the face of a very warranted criticism.
Speaker: What I would say there is that, one, I'm the first to tell you that, yes, racism is embedded in many of our institutions and throughout our society. But here's the thing. The RCMP and police are killing us. It's killing us. It's not an excuse.
Speaker: that it is embedded in our society and as a result of what they get to kill us with impunity, that's absolutely patently absurd. The killings need to stop. We need to work on providing better safety and security services in our society.
Speaker: And no amount of apologetic language is going to change that. Simply, the fact that racism is embedded throughout our society just means that we've got a lot of work to do. And why not start with one of these most urgent institutions that are killing us at astronomical rates and destroying our communities and families?
Speaker: I want to go off on a bit of a sidebar for a few minutes. A few weeks ago, you were passed over for a segment on CBC's The Current after you raised the defunding the police issue in a pre -interview. We've seen Wendy Mesley's been suspended. Rex Murphy gets space to say, we are not a racist country.
Speaker: and Indigenous reporter Christine Genier resigned because of her ethics as an Indigenous person and feeling like she couldn't fulfill her role as a journalist. Talk about how the mainstream media is enabling systemic racism here in Canada.
Speaker: Well, I think that the mainstream media and the way that it is constructed is really, you know, was really revealed this week, the dangers of having such a homogenous power structure at our mainstream media institutions.
Speaker: It's no secret that the production teams and the structures of power in Canadian media are very, very white. We might see faces of color and black faces and Indigenous faces in front of a camera or front facing, but behind the scenes in the newsrooms where they decide what is and is not news and decide how to approach an analysis,
Speaker: those tables are overwhelmingly white. And because of that, some of the issues that black and indigenous people have in our society are not reported on widely. So even as there was unrest happening with respect to police brutality all across North America, an indigenous woman from BC, Chantal Moore,
Speaker: was killed by police in New Brunswick, and it didn't hit the headlines in the way that it should have, certainly not in the way that George Floyd's murder hit the headlines here in Canada. And that's partially because of how people decide what is and isn't news in Canada.
Speaker: And the dangers of that, the consequence for us, means that there isn't a watchful media eye in Canada paying attention to the violence experienced by our communities. And in some ways, the refusal of Canadian media institutions to engage with these issues allow the violence to continue with impunity. They know they can get away with these things.
Speaker: because they haven't been asked to account for their behavior consistently over decades. And that should be an embarrassment to all media institutions and they should make it a priority to really change this issue because the cost again is just far too high.
Speaker: Sandy, we've seen a huge response supporting Black Lives Matter and defending police everywhere, but hearing in Canada as well from on the ground, does that surprise you? It doesn't, it doesn't. I mean, I am, you know,
Speaker: happily surprised by the fact that we are able to have these discussions in a way right now that we weren't able to have in 2016 when we were also raising this issue of defunding the police.
Speaker: I think that people are interested in the idea because it feels so obvious once you hear the justifications, the very rational basis behind the argument. I think most rational people
Speaker: hear the arguments and think to themselves, well, yeah, why wouldn't we have considered this long ago? And it's just a further actual indictment of the media. And we could have had this discussion back in 2016 when we were raising it. We could have had this discussion long ago when activists, I mean, quite frankly, activists have been raising this since before my time as an activist. So the fact that it's taken so long to get here
Speaker: is an issue that the media also needs to contend with. There was an email that was leaked to Canada Land that they shared with me just after I wrote that series of tweets about my experience not going on the CBC that you referenced. And this was an email where The National, which is one of the news television shows from the CBC, was considering having me on the air.
Speaker: And whoever was writing, you know, that part was redacted, said, look, you know, we can have her on the air, but we have to realize that the idea of defunding the police is an extreme position in Canada. And if she comes on, we should acknowledge it as such. And, you know, like, so for a media institution to decide that something is extreme before even giving
Speaker: me or the audience an opportunity to engage with it and to decide that that is how they're going to engage with it is just such a problem. It's such a problem because it's not extreme in my community. I would hazard a guess it's not extreme in the Indigenous community and probably other communities as well. Folks who identify as having a mental illness and know about
Speaker: the danger that faces them, people with disabilities that know about the dangers that face them when the police interact with them. And so, you know, it's just a really sorry state of affairs that the power structures at Canadian media institutions are treating themselves as arbiters of what we can discuss publicly as Canadian society.
Speaker: Well, it's great to see that discussion starting to open up. How do you think people can work towards concrete change in defending the police and make sure this doesn't become a fleeting moment and we just don't get platitudes and more reports and empty promises?
Speaker: Yeah, I think there's one we need to acknowledge that we've done enough reports and we're not reinventing the wheel here. The models for this exist elsewhere all over the world in the UK where police officers are not armed, frontline police officers are not armed.
Speaker: in Oregon, where they've implemented an emergency mental health service that diverts one in five calls to 911 to a whole other service that provides the type of supports that people need when they're experiencing a mental health crisis. You know, these models exist elsewhere. And so we don't have to reinvent the wheel, we just have to get started on it.
Speaker: And one thing I've noticed is that we haven't heard a lot from politicians despite all of the people taking to the streets and demanding that we consider defunding the police. And I don't know on what issue politicians would be so quiet about.
Speaker: if there was such a large uprising. So I think, you know, in this week, in the coming weeks, we gotta, as people who care about this issue, start holding our decision makers to account. They can't ignore this issue. This is, you know, Black lives matter. Indigenous lives also matter. And it is up to them to listen to the public when they're saying, we will not stand for this to continue.
Speaker: Well, it's been really fantastic talking with you, Sandy. And we'll keep up on this too, because there's a lot going on here in BC with people trying to get some movement on this issue. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. I've been speaking with Sandy Hudson. Sandy Hudson co -founded Black Lives Matter Toronto and is the vice chair of the Black Legal Action Center. And she is a UCLA law student. She also produces a podcast with Nora Loretto called Sandy and Nora
Speaker: talk politics. You can find that at sandyandnora .com.
