{"id":12545,"date":"2018-09-22T10:25:27","date_gmt":"2018-09-22T14:25:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=12545"},"modified":"2018-09-22T10:29:29","modified_gmt":"2018-09-22T14:29:29","slug":"vancouver-police-to-defend-against-accusation-of-racism-at-human-rights-tribunal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2018\/09\/22\/vancouver-police-to-defend-against-accusation-of-racism-at-human-rights-tribunal\/","title":{"rendered":"Vancouver police to defend against accusation of racism at human-rights tribunal"},"content":{"rendered":"

The governing body of Vancouver\u2019s police force, the Vancouver Police Board, is set to appear at a human-rights tribunal after a woman accused officers of mistreating her because she is Indigenous.<\/p>\n

The woman, Deborah Campbell, claims that police were demeaning and aggressive toward her, while treating white people nearby with respect.<\/p>\n

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The incident happened in 2016 around midnight between July 15 and 16 in East Vancouver. Campbell was outside with her two dogs, witnessing her adult son getting arrested.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo officers \u2026 grabbed me and dragged me and my chihuahua dogs about 20 feet away, without explanation,\u201d Campbell\u2019s complaint reads, adding that one of the officers left bruises on her arm.<\/p>\n

Campbell\u2019s claims have not been proven at the human-rights tribunal, and the VPB denies any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u201cThe police officers were saying, \u2018Why don\u2019t you go home?\u2019 \u201d Campbell\u2019s claim continues. \u201cI answered that he is my son and that I was not leaving,\u201d and then \u201cone of the male officers deliberately obstructed my view so that I could not fully hear or see what was going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two Vancouver police officers accused of harassment in the Downtown Eastside<\/a><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Campbell claims, two other people who witnessed the arrest, who are both Caucasian, were treated respectfully.<\/p>\n

The case is scheduled to be heard in front of the The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal from Dec. 4-7.<\/p>\n

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A document submitted by the Vancouver Police Board in response to Campbell\u2019s claim alleges she was interfering with police work and \u201ccausing a disturbance\u201d while they were trying to arrest her son and another person for assault with a weapon and uttering threats. Both were found to be carrying knives.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was yelling loudly and she was standing close to the officer and suspects,\u201d it reads. She was \u201crepeatedly asked to step back to provide a safe space for the police to deal with the parties in custody, but she refused,\u201d so she was \u201cescorted\u201d a short distance away from the scene.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Human-rights lawyer Clea Parfitt, who is not involved in the case but read the filed documents, said it\u2019s clear that Campbell and the police have different views of the facts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe parties don\u2019t agree exactly on what occurred,\u201d Parfitt said, adding that \u201clike most human-rights complaints, the success of the complaint is going to depend a bit on whose version of the facts is accepted.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Vancouver Police Department declined a request for an interview, saying it wouldn\u2019t comment on an issue that\u2019s before the human-rights tribunal. The VPB\u2019s spokesperson Mayor Gregor Robertson was not made available for an interview, and Campbell\u2019s lawyer Amber Prince told StarMetro that she and Campbell did not want to be interviewed.<\/p>\n

But in documents submitted to the tribunal, Prince provided further detail on Campbell\u2019s claim.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was demeaned, intimidated, harassed and disrespected as a visibly Indigenous woman, while Caucasian bystanders were treated well,\u201d it reads. Police \u201ctreated her concerns and distress about her son and how the police would treat him as unimportant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parfitt said she will be interested to see whether either side presents evidence on what the standard procedures are in terms of allowing bystanders to witness an arrest.<\/p>\n

Prince\u2019s documents add that Campbell claims the police were aware that one of the other bystanders, a Caucasian man, filmed the officers when they were dragging her away. And, even though he was \u201cchallenging\u201d the way the police were treating her and her son, the police treated him respectfully.<\/p>\n

In the documents, Prince suggests the police may have been retaliating against Campbell for a formal complaint she and her son made to the police, saying it\u2019s likely the officers on scene knew her history.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is possible both (Campbell and her son) were being harassed, intimidated and retaliated against for bringing a complaint against the police in 2014,\u201d Prince\u2019s statement reads.<\/p>\n

Parfitt also said that, because of a widely held concern that Indigenous people are sometimes treated unfairly by police, it\u2019s possible that Campbell would have a greater need to observe the arrest.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if their treatment (of Campbell) wasn\u2019t different (than how they would have treated her if she were Caucasian), I don\u2019t know if it was or wasn\u2019t, that still might be discriminatory treatment because she might be entitled to more opportunity to watch and more opportunity to be present, and be a witness and a bystander, than someone who is Caucasian,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Source: StarMetro Vancouver<\/a> article by\u00a0Tessa Vikander.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>Tessa Vikander is a Vancouver-based reporter covering identity and inequality. Follow her on Twitter:\u00a0@tessavikander<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The governing body of Vancouver\u2019s police force, the Vancouver Police Board, is set to appear at a human-rights tribunal after a woman accused officers of mistreating her because she is Indigenous. The woman, Deborah Campbell, […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,15,2],"tags":[456,45,138,743,597,5570],"class_list":{"0":"post-12545","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"category-human-rights","9":"category-news","10":"tag-british-columbia","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-human-rights","13":"tag-human-rights-tribunal","14":"tag-racism","15":"tag-vancouver-police","16":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12545"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12546,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12545\/revisions\/12546"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}