Hello there, folks! It's me, Michael Bach, your Diversity Dude,
and it's time for another episode of Monday Morning Musings.
And, yes I do know it's Tuesday.
Thank you for pointing it out.
But as you'll see in a second, I had a very good reason why I wanted to wait to record my video.
First off, I need to slap myself on the wrist
because last week I forgot to wish all of my Jewish friends "Chag sameach" or "Happy Hanukkah"
because it was...
it was Hanukkah!
It was the first day of Hanukkah last Monday...
Stupid! I don't know what I was thinking.
And yesterday, of course, was the last day of Hanukkah, so to my Jewish friends, again, "Chag sameach".
I hope you had a wonderful Hanukkah season.
Now to the reason why I didn't record my video yesterday
is because the Ontario Human Rights Commission released a report yesterday
on racial profiling with the Toronto Police Service and I wanted to talk about it.
They examined a whole bunch of things, including cases by the Special Investigations Unit or SIU
between 2000, 2006 and 2013, and 2017, and they found some pretty staggering things.
First and foremost, a black person or person from black Afro-Caribbean communities in this city
is almost 20 times more likely to be shot and killed by police than a white person.
20 times.
Let me run down the numbers for you.
They found that black people made up 25.4 per cent of SIU investigations;
28.2 per cent of police use-of-force cases;
36 per cent of police shootings;
61.5 per cent of police use-of-force cases resulting in civilian death;
and 70 per cent of police shootings resulting in civilian death.
Now, before you're thinking "Oh, yeah, well, black people are more violent and they carry guns."
Not quite.
They also found that in police shootings,
20 per cent of white people were carrying guns versus 11.1 per cent of black civilians.
They also...
It's also worth noting that black people in the City of Toronto make up only 8.8 per cent of the population.
I'd love to tell you that these numbers are surprising.
They're not.
They're quite stunning.
They're quite what I expected; maybe a little higher than I expected, but they're as bad as I expected.
And why I think it's important to talk about this...
First of all, I'm really pleased that that OHRC has shone a light on this
and this really puts the onus on the Toronto Police Service to do something about this.
They need to examine these results and take this seriously.
But so does every police service in the country.
We've worked with a lot of police services and this sort of issue is not unique to the Toronto Police.
There are police services across this country that shall remain nameless, but you know who you are,
you need to take these issues seriously.
You're making police decisions, judgment calls based on fiction, not on fact.
Based on the colour of a person's skin.
So it's time for police services across this country to wake up and address these issues.
I'm going to post a link down in the body of this video.
I would encourage to read the article, but then read the report.
Educate yourself on these issues and make sure you understand what's going on,
not just if you're a resident of Toronto but anywhere in the country.
That's it for me.
I hope you have a fabulous week and I will see you next Monday, not Tuesday,
for another episode of Monday Morning Musings.
Bye.