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Victoria police use-of-force data shows Indigenous 'overrepresentation'

Darpan News Desk The Canadian Press, 16 Jan, 2025 12:49 PM

B.C.’s Office of the Human Rights Commissioner says it's planning to release the results of an inquiry into police use of force in the province later this year, but it's still crunching numbers in the meantime.

The inquiry launched last January is probing police departments for use-of-force data to determine if it shows "disproportionate impacts to racialized persons or persons with mental health issues."

The Victoria Police Department on Wednesday released race-based data showing an "overrepresentation" of Indigenous people in cases involving police use of force over a six-year period from 2018 to 2023.

But the police department said the overrepresentation is also reflected in the justice system overall and the data doesn't mean officers are choosing to use force "on one specific ethnicity over another."

The data was released in response to an order in November from the province's human rights commissioner.

The police department's "race-focused data" from 2018 to 2023 shows Indigenous people were involved in 17 per cent of cases involving use of force, an "overrepresentation of Indigenous persons related to the local population."

Less than five per cent of Victoria's population identify as Indigenous, according to census data.

The department said it recorded 1,685 use-of-force incidents over the six-year period.

It said 1,246 of the incidents representing 74 per cent of cases involved Caucasian people, 280 involved Indigenous people, 14 involved Asian individuals, 52 involved Black people, and 64 involved Hispanic, Middle Eastern or South Asian people.

The police department said the data is missing context because it does not differentiate between levels of force used by officers, or whether it was initiated by police or the subjects.

It said force ranges from "soft physical control that causes injury" to shootings.

"We haven’t completed our analysis of the data yet so we’re unable to comment at this point," said Lindsey Bertrand, spokeswoman for the commissioner's office, in an email to The Canadian Press.

"We’re expecting to make the inquiry results public in late summer (or) early fall."

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