Nana-Hasia Asankomah shares insights from her research project in Canada.
During the summer of 2024, I spent three months at the University of Regina, Canada, conducting research on policing. I collaborated with faculty at the Centre for Socially Engaged Theatre (C-SET) on ongoing research, investigating tensions within policing. My own research inquiry explored how police-civilian collaborative initiatives can mitigate racial disparities in policing.
Since the murder of George Floyd in 2020, there is no doubt that discussions on police brutality and racial justice have surged globally. While the murder occurred in Minneapolis, USA, it also sparked conversations on police brutality in Canada. The racialised roots of policing in Canada can be traced back to fugitive slave adverts which criminalised slaves who ran away from their slave masters. In modern times, research demonstrates a racial disproportionality in policing, with black people more likely to face police violence, be stopped and questioned, and suffer more severe sentencing than white populations. While it may be difficult to draw empirical connections between the racialised history of policing and contemporary statistics on police violence, racial disparities within policing are not negligible.
I chose to focus on police-civilian collaborative initiatives in Canada as a potential solution to mitigating racial disparities. I was motivated by the paradox that despite numerous police-civilian collaborative initiatives aimed at enhancing policing experiences for marginalised groups, there was also a prevalence of concerning stories of police violence. Both were happening simultaneously, and I couldn’t ignore either of them.
I focused on three collaborative initiatives; SafeTO: A community Safety & wellbeing plan, Canada’s Black Justice Strategy, and Regina’s All out Progressive Policing Initiative: Engagement and Enforcement. While the respective initiatives have their own unique goals, fundamentally, they seek to engage with civilian populations more to address broad issues relating to police violence, drug addiction, and enhancing care for their respective communities. I identified some tensions that may be hindering them from reaching their full potential. Despite their ambitious goals, it was sometimes vague how those goals would be achieved and how their success could be measured. Some of these goals included establishing a Black Justice Portfolio in the Department of Justice or promoting healing and justice through the understanding of trauma, to name a few.
Furthermore, I also identified that some of the initiatives were not clear on how they aimed to address potential power imbalances that may occur during collaborative engagements. For example, studies show that unequal power dynamics can occur when stakeholders from different sectors are collaborating for a common goal. In instances where there has been collaboration between the police and civilians, the police may dictate the agenda and lead conversations which may harm the collaborative purpose of their engagement.
In addition to the broad goals and potential unequal power dynamics, I also identified that some of the collaborative initiatives I analysed negated historical racial tensions in policing and contemporary evidence of police-based violence. As such, some of the initiatives purely focused on solutions without adequately looking at the problems or their root causes.
After identifying these tensions, I sought to understand how they could be mitigated. After all, the concept of engaging various stakeholders to solve a problem is a promising one and is increasingly becoming a popular solution for bringing about communal change, especially when dealing with multicultural issues. This led me to conduct primary research in the form of a three-episode podcast with Dr Nancy Mc Naughton who is a Health Professional Educator, Dr John Lilley who is the Secretary and a Founding Member of the Canadian Coalition For Police Reform (CCPR), Michael Federico who is the Vice-President of the CCPR, and Dr Moussa Magassa, who is an Associate Vice President of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, and a Professor in Education at Mount Royal University.
During my interviews with them, they identified that collaboration between the police and civilians can be enhanced through a 21st Century Curriculum which educates the police on the history of policing and creative methods of challenging unequal power dynamics.
For example, Dr Moussa Magassa shared an experience he had as a civilian co-chair of Greater Victoria. This committee brought all the police service in Victoria to collaborate with civilians. He recalled that through a football game between the police and Muslim civilians, power dynamics were challenged, which encouraged communication between the two groups and encouraged some of the civilians to join the Victoria police service.
Overall, my research findings identify tensions within police-civilian collaborative initiatives and how they can be mitigated. It is crucial to pay attention to the historical and contemporary experiences that marginalised groups have had with police and incorporate them into the solutions we co-create.
On a personal level, my research experience in Canada was incredibly insightful for me. I immersed myself in a completely different environment academically and socially. I particularly enjoyed the personal development of research where I could confront my own thoughts, feelings, and frustrations about this topic through my work.
If you are a student who would like to get involved in research, I recommend that you pay attention to the research opportunities your department shares. This is a brilliant way to hone skills that you can apply to your own area of research in the future.
Note: this article gives the views of the authors, and not the position of the LSE Department of Government, nor of the London School of Economics.
Image credit: ‘BLM Rally’ by GoToVan
