Juno News - Street checks and carding is not racist

00:00:00.000 The BC Civil Liberties Association issued a press release on Monday calling for the

00:00:10.240 Vancouver Police Board to order the Vancouver Department to end the practice of carding or

00:00:15.960 street checks because they're racist and illegal according to the BCCLA. In an open letter to the

00:00:23.880 city of Vancouver they said quote we are writing to you to put actions to your words and take

00:00:29.820 immediate action to address systemic discrimination in policing by ending all street checks in

00:00:37.140 Vancouver and BC. Street checks are harmful and discriminatory for indigenous black and low-income

00:00:46.200 communities. Street checks also have no basis in law and you have the powers to ban them

00:00:53.380 unquote. They issued this open letter in conjunction with Black Lives Matter Vancouver and a litany of

00:01:02.320 other left-wing groups. In other words all of the usual suspects. Taking away a proactive tool of

00:01:12.280 street policing is patently foolish but we've seen this in other jurisdictions. John Tory, Mayor of

00:01:19.280 Toronto, eliminated carding and Tavis, the Toronto violence intervention strategy which was a proactive

00:01:26.840 squad of police officers tasked with deploying to troubled areas anywhere in the city and deal with

00:01:34.960 the problems as they found them. It was massively effective. In the intervening years since shootings

00:01:42.960 and gun crime in Toronto has risen exponentially. This year there have been 220 shooting incidents in the city

00:01:51.580 with 96 persons killed or wounded. An 18 percent increase year over year. In New York City, a month after

00:02:01.120 disbanding the plainclothes anti-crime unit which was designed to halt gang and gun crime, shootings in just 10

00:02:08.780 in precincts are up 205 percent. The VPD has already been forced to absorb a 1.8 million dollar budget cut and is

00:02:18.100 trying to do that without adversely affecting service to the citizens of the city. And now the BCCLA want them to

00:02:26.100 stop doing anything but what? Respond to 911 calls? This is foolish and dangerous. And what would any discussion about the

00:02:35.200 nonsense of the left be without pointing out their inevitable hypocrisy? The BCCLA took great pains to point out how

00:02:44.880 Indigenous women were particularly overrepresented in street check data. So the police are taking pains, apparently, to check

00:02:52.940 Indigenous women on the downtown streets and ensure their safety and well-being. It wasn't that long ago, the VPD were being

00:03:01.460 criticized by the same groups for not caring about Indigenous women in the wake of the Robert Pickton

00:03:08.260 serial killings of Indigenous women, primarily sex trade workers in the downtown east side of Vancouver.

00:03:16.980 Where the police are now going out of their way to keep track of them and somehow that is now drawing fire.

00:03:25.460 Using stats saying Indigenous folks are overrepresented in the street checks,

00:03:30.500 given their percentage of the overall population, is one thing, and that may be true. But in the downtown

00:03:37.540 east side, Indigenous people make up the majority of the population and the pedestrian traffic on the

00:03:43.780 drug-fueled streets. VPD chief Adam Palmer has demonstrated unique skills in navigating the political

00:03:52.420 landscape with the left-wing mayor and council. I hope he digs in firm on this issue and says no.

00:03:59.860 The BCCLA and the rest of the poverty pimps need to be told the police will do their jobs as they see fit,

00:04:08.100 and that it's their call. Period. For True North, I'm Leo Knight.

Juno News - July 07, 2020