Change to VPD handcuff policy after wrongful arrests ‘small step’ toward addressing racism: Turpel-Lafond

The Vancouver Police Department could be on the verge of changing its handcuffing and detention policy in the wake of two high-profile cases of wrongful arrest, including one where an Indigenous man and his 12-year-old granddaughter at a bank in 2019.

It’s a move one expert says is long overdue, and a “small step” toward confronting systemic racism in policing.

The police board will hear a report on the review of the current policy Thursday, including recommendations of a change that would ask officers to specifically consider how restraints are used on “people who are Indigenous, racialized, or part of other equity deserving groups.” The new policy further recommends that handcuffs be used when reasonable, proportionate to the risk and necessary to fulfil a legitimate policing objective.

The police board says it launched a review of the department’s protocols when Maxwell Johnson and his granddaughter were handcuffed after trying to open an account at the Bank of Montreal using their government-issued status cards. The board report says it was later determined there was no criminal activity involved and it began revising its handcuff policy after the arrest and subsequent media attention.

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In May of 2021, while the policy review was underway, retired Justice Selwyn Romilly was stopped and handcuffed while walking on the seawall. Romilly, B.C.’s first Black Supreme Court Judge, said he was handcuffed after police told him he matched the description of a suspect they were looking for. That suspect was described as a dark-skinned man in his 40s. Romilly, who is 81, described the experience as humiliating, saying the way he was treated “certainly was different from the way the average white person will be treated.”

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Johnson filed a complaint with the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal last year alleging the bank called 911 over an identification issue because they are Indigenous, while it accuses the police of racial profiling leading to their detention and the use of handcuffs.

Mary Ellen-Turpel-Lafond, a law professor and retired judge who recently completed a review of anti-Indigenous racism in the province’s healthcare system, is representing the Union of BC Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) who are intervenors in the case.  

“The announcement of a new policy direction with respect to handcuffing and the use of handcuffs, I think that was an overdue development,” she says.

“In particular, the experience of Indigenous, Black people of colour with respect to the engagement with the Vancouver Police Department has been a concern for some time. The issues of racism, both toward Indigenous people and others were worrying.”

While a change in how police decide when and with whom to use handcuffs is necessary, Turpel-Lafond says the cases of Johnson and Romilly point to deeper, long-standing issues.

“While the handcuff policy is welcome and the guidance in the policy is helpful, the deeper issues around racism, profiling, and harsh treatment of certain citizens is something that certainly has been a major concern in Vancouver. It isn’t enough if we don’t deal with the deeper issue of racism — systemic racism — directed at certain citizens.”

Turpel-Lafond points to Chief Const. Adam Palmer’s comments about systemic racism in policing as a major concern.

“I think that the resistance to naming the issue is really a problem,” she says.

In 2020, following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, VPD Chief Const. Adam Palmer told the Vancouver Sun he did not think systemic racism wasn’t evident in Canadian policing, calling the suggestion “offensive.” Nearly a year later, when asked if Romilly’s wrongful handcuffing and detention changed how he views that, he said simply, “No, it doesn’t.”

The police department issued a statement after the rights case was launched saying the circumstances were “regrettable” and understandably traumatic for Johnson and his family.

Turpel-Lafond says the purpose of the UBCIC’s intervention is to highlight how the experience of Johnson and his granddaughter can not and should not be understood as an isolated incident.

“We’ll be bringing forward evidence that will speak to systemic racism in the Vancouver Police Department and how they interact with Indigenous people — and that systemic racism is persistent,” she says.

“It’s important to hold people to account, and discrimination plays a role in how [police] interact with First Nations people. That really is the objective here, it’s to address the wrongs that we believe happened to Maxwell and his granddaughter, but also to create a more safe city, a culturally safe city for Indigenous, Black and people of colour to go about doing ordinary things that everybody does — go banking, take a walk, what have you.”

Further, she says the UBCIC will want to see that the change to the handcuffing policy creating actual change.

“If this policy shift is going to work, we also need to see that it’s working. We’re going to need to monitor and track this, and we’re going to have to make sure that it’s not just a piece of paper that is being thrown out there as a shield to protect them from closer examination of their practices,” she says.

“They’re not going to be comforted by just a piece of paper saying we have a new policy.”

With files from Kier Junos and The Canadian Press