Police Brutality In Canada

I am writing you this letter because I am worried. My concerns are related to the subject of police brutality in Canada. I fear that a lot of citizens ignore how much this type of violence is present in our country and I am asking you to help educated them, as well as to put a stop to police brutality. This past couple of years, the number of crimes committed by the police have increased and proper consequences are not well imposed. Police officers are supposed to protect the citizens of the country and instead, they are losing the trust of these people by committing frightening and unnecessary actions. In this letter, I will explain to you why I am worried….The violation of some human rights such as the article seven, nine and …. will be

First of all article 7 is not respected: “ No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” It is clear that using physical violence and abusing the use of weapons is in fact, a vicious and ruthless way to treat innocent humans. No matter how much authority policemen have, it should not allow them to abuse of it. As an example, I will use the case of Orlando Bowen, a professional football player that played for the Canadian league. On March 26, 2004, Bowen was at a night club celebrating a contract he had just signed with the Toronto Argonauts. Two disguised police officers approached him to ask if he was carrying any drugs with him. The football player informed them that he did not have any drugs on him and after the policemen kept insisting, he decided to leave. He was threatened by the officers as they suggested that he stays with them or else they will shoot him and Bowen immediately obeyed. With no proof, Bowen was arrested for possession of cocaine after he was brutally beaten by the officers for no valuable reason. It is important to note that Bowen was not aware of what he was being charged for until he was put in jail and he assured that the drugs that were found on him did not belong to him. Bowen was charged with possession

It started in the 1980s when people gathered together and protest about this issue, after there had been a lot of murders of civilians by the police, especially in the Black community. These protest led to the creation of the Police Services Act in 1990 which then created the SIU. When the protests decreased after the establishment of the act, the SIU became insignificant. The SIU can also be considered biased as it only allows for retired policemen to serve as judges in the unit. Statistics show that in 2013, there were 3 400 investigations done by the SIU, and out of all of them, only ninety-five of them were the police officers charged with criminal assault, sixteen were brought to court and three were sentenced to jail time. Unfortunately, the SIU is not present in all provinces such as in Quebec. What I suggest is that it gets installed in all provinces and that it opens to judges other than retired police officers such as lawyers or anyone that has experience with the law and that would not have a biased opinion. This way, hopefully, the police officers that commit crimes get the proper consequences they deserve and it will reduce the rate of offenses done by the