Tracking race when officers use force ‘bare minimum’ Winnipeg police should do, expert says

Jordan Charlie, a 24-year-old Inuk, was the fourth person police have shot and killed in Winnipeg this year — but he’s the only one whose race is publicly known, and that’s a problem, a criminologist says.

Kevin Walby says the Winnipeg Police Service should track and publicly release data about race in all police use-of-force interactions.

“It’s the bare minimum any police service can do,” said Walby, a criminology professor at the University of Winnipeg. 

While some Canadian police services collect and publish data on racial identities when they use force, Winnipeg police neither tracks nor shares such data. Critics say this damages trust with racialized communities and hinders oversight. 

Charlie, who was from Nunavut, was shot and killed in the parking lot of the Unicity Shopping Centre on Nov. 24.

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It was the fourth lethal police shooting in 2024, according to a CBC analysis of Independent Investigation Unit of Manitoba news releases, but the race of the people killed is not tracked.

Race-based use of force data is important because it “sets the scene” for understanding what’s really happening with policing, Walby said.

Not tracking the data means police control the narrative about how they operate, he said.

A lack of data can also damage the reputation of the police and the trust people have in the service, he said.

Walby wants the province to require police to track racial data in use-of-force cases and make it available to the Winnipeg police internal investigation unit, the service’s main oversight body. The data should also be open and accessible to the public, he said.

Daniel Hidalgo, founder of CommUnity204, which helps support marginalized and homeless people, said there isn’t enough police accountability and transparency when it comes to interactions with racialized communities. 

“There’s a disconnect, and I think if we kept that data … it would mitigate some of the differences between public and police perspectives,” Hidalgo said on Friday.

The data could start a conversation about policing biases towards racialized groups, he said.

In a 2021 Southern Chiefs’ Organization survey, 70 per cent of the 672 Indigenous people surveyed had a racist encounter with police.

‘Has to be seen to be believed’

In 2020, the Ontario government started requiring police forces across the province to track race-based use of force data, in accordance with the 2017 provincial Anti-Racism Act.

That same year, Calgary police followed suit, and started publishing the data in their annual use-of-force reports. 

In April, the RCMP launched pilot projects to track data for police interactions, including use of force, in Thompson, Man., Whitehorse and Wood Buffalo, Alta. 

Hamilton police also collect racial data, and the information has validated the Black community’s experiences when racial police abuse has happened, said Lyndon George, executive director for the Hamilton Anti-Racism Resource Centre.

The numbers created an opening to have conversations with the police board and province, George said last week.

“Too often racism has to be seen to be believed,” he said. 

In 2023, Black people were involved in 17 per cent of use-of-force incidents, despite only being five per cent of Hamilton’s population, the Hamilton Police Service’s annual Use of Force Report says.

Use of force incidents can range from physical force resulting in injury, pointing a firearm or Taser, or firing a firearm or Taser, the Hamilton 2023 Use of Force Report says.

The data has caused community accusations of systemic racism within Hamilton police. 

If police weren’t collecting and sharing the data, it would make it easy for them to deny systemic racism, George said.

“You would keep on having the same conversation over and over again.”  

While the data is helpful for identifying cultural issues and revealing patterns in policing, more action needs to be taken, he said.

Hamilton police created a committee of racialized community members who review the data and make recommendations to the service. However, concerns were raised about the committee not being community-led and the Hamilton police being too involved.

“It’s not only about looking at numbers and having a report, it’s about having a strategy and a plan to mitigate, to respond and to change these trends,” George said.

The data needs to be taken further to include incidents like strip searches and traffic stops, and to allow people to see which individual officers use force frequently, he said. 

In Toronto, race-based data triggered community members to protest and demand action on systemic racism when it showed racialized groups were up to two times more likely to have police officers draw their guns on them, a 2022 Toronto police report said.

Data far from a solution: expert

Change has been slow and collecting data is far from a solution, said Ameil Joseph, a social work professor at McMaster University. 

But without the data, it would be difficult to identify where the problems lie, he said.

“I think that’s very empowering for communities, but there’s still a lot more work to do,” Joseph said.

In 2020, Statistics Canada and the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police committed to collecting racial data for all victims and accused people through the universal crime reporting survey. 

However, race-based use-of-force data isn’t included in the project, said a spokesperson for the Canadian Association of Chief of Police. 

In January, Statistics Canada released a report saying that while some police services collect the data, it’s not in a systematic and consistent way across jurisdictions and it’s not widely published. 

Clear standards needed

Chief Stu Betts, who co-chairs the national police chief association’s Indigenous and racialized data collection committee, said if racial data was collected and shared “haphazardly” without a clear framework, it could have damaging effects.

He said without proper governance and standards, racial data collection could continue harmful stereotypes about racialized communities, or it could be weaponized for unfair policing criticism. 

Consulting with racial communities is crucial to make the data fair, Betts said. 

He said use-of-force data isn’t included in the national racial data framework because there isn’t a universal standard for how police forces track use of force. However, individual police forces could choose to collect that data through the new national system, Betts said. 

Betts, who’s the Peterborough Police Service chief, sees the data they collect as invaluable. 

“If we need to address and adjust how we’re policing in our community, I want to have that information at my fingertips so I can make appropriate decisions,” Betts said on Wednesday. Without the racial data, all he’s left with is anecdotal evidence to drive policy changes, he said. 

A national framework for collecting racial data is expected to roll out in 2026, Betts said.

The Winnipeg Police Service said in an email it’s part of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police committee that’s working on creating a national standard for race-based data collection. 

Justice Minister Matt Wiebe said in an email statement that the province is standardizing cultural competency training for police officers and working toward “true reconciliation and eradicating racism.” 

Both the justice minister and Winnipeg police didn’t answer questions about why they don’t track racial use-of-force data.