Before VPD handcuffed retired Black judge, witness worried about racial profiling

VANCOUVER  — When Vancouver police were called to the seawall Friday because a distressed man was causing a disturbance, Fatima Jaffer was worried a Black man who was trying to intervene and deescalate the situation would end up being racially profiled and arrested. Instead, police wrongfully handcuffed and detained a different Black man — retired BC Supreme Court Justice Selwyn Romilly.

Jaffer and her friend were walking after swimming when a man approached them who she describes as “very volatile” and “quite scary.” Jaffer says when she made eye contact, he approached and “swung at her,” but she stepped back and was not struck. The man continued down the seawall and approached another woman sitting on a bench in a similarly threatening manner.

‘The reason I didn’t call the police is because he’s a person of colour’

The man had darker skin, and was speaking in a language Jaffer thinks may have been Farsi. The fact that he is a person of colour who may not speak English as his first language meant that even though she was frightened, she was reticent to report the incident.

“I didn’t call the police, and the reason I didn’t call the police is because he’s a person of colour, and I was immediately afraid for him, even though I was also afraid for people on the seawall,” she explains.

“There’s a guy who tends a garden right there by the seawall and he jumped up the wall, and he said, ‘Don’t worry, got it.’ And he went after him. He said, ‘I’m going to go and make sure this doesn’t get out of hand.’ Because [he] is a Black man we were doubly worried.”

But someone did call police. When an officer approached Jaffer, she says she described the man to them, noting he was not Black, and not bald. She also informed them that a bystander who is Black had gone to intervene.

“He’s actually trying to help the situation, so don’t go after [him],” Jaffer says she told the police.

That night, when Jaffer learned police had handcuffed Romilly, a Black man decades older than the one described to police, she says she was “really angry and really sad.”

VPD response ‘unacceptable, reprehensible’: witness

Since Friday’s events Jaffer says she hasn’t been able to sleep, but not because she was threatened and nearly assaulted.

“Every night I can’t sleep ever since then, but it’s not that I can’t sleep because I almost got hit. What makes me not sleep is the situation where you can’t call the police, you can not be safe. Calling the police was not an option because you don’t know what’s going to happen when people of colour are involved,” she explains.

After Romilly’s arrest, Vancouver police issued a statement saying he was handcuffed because he “fit the description” of a man who was “kicking, punching, and spitting at people.” Police acknowledge they were looking for a man in his 40s or 50s. Romilly is 81. The VPD has since apologized to Romilly, however the police chief says he does not think systemic racism was to blame.

“We make mistakes. We don’t always get it right,” Chief Constable Adam Palmer said on Monday.

Romilly himself told NEWS 1130, “The way I was treated, certainly was different from the way the average white person will be treated.”

Jaffer says the way the VPD has responded since the news of how Romilly was treated broke has been shockingly inadequate and offensive.

“When I heard the statement they made, this is what made me really upset,” she explains, adding that the issue of systemic racism and police brutality targeting BIPOC communities in both the US and Canada has been repeatedly raised since the murder of George Floyd last year.

“I thought that the VPD would clue in that they had messed up. But to justify it, to rationalize it and say the cop did the best he could. To me, that’s reprehensible, that’s unacceptable. It’s just wrong.”

While she says efforts to educate the VPD seem to be failing, Jaffer says awareness of systemic racism does seem to be spreading. She notes everyone on the seawall that day was worried about what might happen if police were called in to respond to a report of a person of colour in an apparent mental health crisis.

“Everybody there in our circle — all of whom were white, except me — knew what could happen, everybody was afraid,” she says.

“They were afraid for the people involved, both the Black man who went to help and to make sure nobody got hurt, and the person of colour who was off the rails.”

RELATED STORIES:

• Vancouver Police wrongly detain B.C.’s first Black Supreme Court Justice on seawall

• Advocate stunned after VPD chief claims no systemic racism in Canadian policing

• Vancouver city councillors demand accountability after VPD wrongfully detains Black man

‘A Black man walking is a crime’

In a statement, VPD Sgt. Steve Addison says no charges have been recommended against the man whose behaviour prompted the police to intervene.

“There were a number of callers on this case, as well as people flagging down officers as they were doing their patrols. As you can imagine, it was a dynamic situation with lots of information coming in real-time from various sources,” he writes in an email.

“The description given to responding officers by the police dispatcher was of a dark-skinned man, 40-50 years, with a shaved head, dark pants and jacket, and a red shirt. Retired Justice Romilly was walking in the same area at the same time as the suspect, and he matched the description provided to officers. He was briefly detained because an officer thought he was the person who had been reported to police.”

Jaffer says there is no excuse for Romilly’s treatment, given police had information that should have immediately eliminated him as a suspect.

“They go after a Black judge just because he happens to be Black, walking the seawall. A Black man walking is a crime.”

Romilly has told NEWS 1130 he does not intend to file a complaint against the department. Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart says the police board will be meeting to review the incident. No date for that meeting has been set.

With files from Jonathan Szekeres and Charmaine DeSilva