In the summer of 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic surged, millions gathered across Canada and the United States to protest violence and racism in policing sparked by the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. In the days and weeks following, the deaths of Regis Korchinski-Paquet in Toronto and Chantel Moore in New Brunswick showed that police violence is also a Canadian reality. Although BIPOC communities and activists had been calling for action for years, these events sparked unprecedented public outrage and drew crowds in the thousands across Canada calling for the defunding of Canada’s police. Many authoritative reports have identified big problems in Canada’s law enforcement system and have concluded that police are more likely to create or escalate violent situations than promote safety and security. Why? How has an institution tasked with keeping citizens safe become so dangerous to so many Canadians? John Sewell has been studying the problems facing Canadian policing since the 1980s. In Crisis in Canada's Policing, he shines light on the origins of police culture, synthesizes dozens of reports that reveal the failures of the police system in Canada and offers solutions that put power back into the hands of community leaders while reining in and reforming police organizations.

The television spectacles of Oka and the Rodney King affair served to focus public disaffection with the police, a disaffection that has been growing for several years. In Canada, confidence in the police is at an all-time low. At the same time crime rates continue to rise. Canada now has the dubious distinction of having the second highest crime rate in the Western world. How did this state of affairs come about? What do we want from our police? How do we achieve policing that is consistent with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms? The essays in this volume set out to explore these questions. In their introduction, the editors point out that constitutional order is tied to the exercise of power by law enforcement agencies, and that if relations between the police and civil society continue to erode, the exercise of force will rise - a dangerous prospect for democratic societies.

Delving behind Canada’s veneer of multiculturalism and tolerance, Policing Black Lives traces the violent realities of anti-blackness from the slave ships to prisons, classrooms and beyond. Robyn Maynard provides readers with the first comprehensive account of nearly four hundred years of state-sanctioned surveillance, criminalization and punishment of Black lives in Canada. While highlighting the ubiquity of Black resistance, Policing Black Lives traces the still-living legacy of slavery across multiple institutions, shedding light on the state’s role in perpetuating contemporary Black poverty and unemployment, racial profiling, law enforcement violence, incarceration, immigration detention, deportation, exploitative migrant labour practices, disproportionate child removal and low graduation rates. Emerging from a critical race feminist framework that insists that all Black lives matter, Maynard’s intersectional approach to anti-Black racism addresses the unique and understudied impacts of state violence as it is experienced by Black women, Black people with disabilities, as well as queer, trans, and undocumented Black communities. A call-to-action, Policing Black Lives urges readers to work toward dismantling structures of racial domination and re-imagining a more just society.

The overwhelming majority of police calls involve individuals with mental health experiences and yet limited resources exist to prepare first responders for these interactions. Police Response to Mental Health in Canada addresses this gap in the field, providing practical guidance to police studies students on how best to respond to mental health-related calls in both critical and non-critical situations.In addition, this book focuses on the mental health of policing professionals by addressing common mental health symptoms and providing strategies to improve the mental health wellness of policing professionals. Aligned with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, (DSM-5) criteria, this text provides in-depth explanations of the mental health conditions commonly encountered in policing, including mood, psychosis, personality, substance abuse, and post-traumatic stress disorders. Written in an accessible style, this book includes pedagogical tools such as scenario-based learning, case studies, reflection questions, group activities, and chapter summaries to reinforce the learning objectives outlined at the start of each chapter. With the increasing demand for law enforcement officials to be better informed and prepared to interact with those experiencing mental health issues, this is a timely resource for students in college and university police studies programs. FEATURES: - Learning objectives, case studies, and discussion questions - Contributions from leaders in fields of health services, psychology, criminology, policing, and corrections - Discussion of Canadian issues that are relevant across the country, including police relations with Indigenous populations and incidents of gang-related violence

Crisis and Control explains how neoliberal shifts in political and economic systems are militarizing the policing of protest. The book offers a way to understand the influence of political processes on police practices and provides an empirical study of militarized protest policing from 1995 until the present. Lesley J. Wood shows how protest policing techniques have become more militarized and more dependent on intelligence gathering over the past fifteen years partly as a result of the neoliberal restructuring political, economic and social processes. On an increasingly integrated and tumultuous globe, new militarized technologies, formations and frameworks are diffusing quickly through policing networks. Crisis and Control uses novel theoretical and methodological approaches and a unique range of empirical data to make an important and radical contribution to a growing field.

On September 4, 1995, several Stoney Point Natives entered Ipperwash Provincial Park, near Sarnia, Ontario, and began a peaceful protest aimed at reclaiming a traditional burial ground. Within seventy-two hours, one of those protestors, Anthony (Dudley) George, was dead, shot by an OPP officer. In One Dead Indian, after covering the tragedy from the beginning, journalist Peter Edwards examines the circumstances surrounding George’s death and asks a number of tough questions, including: How much pressure did the Ontario government put on the OPP to get tough? As the official public inquiry attempt to shed light on what really happened, Peter Edwards’s investigation of this question brings the story right up to the present.

How policing became the major political issue of our time Combining firsthand accounts from activists with the research of scholars and reflections from artists, Policing the Planet traces the global spread of the broken-windows policing strategy, first established in New York City under Police Commissioner William Bratton. It’s a doctrine that has vastly broadened police power the world over—to deadly effect. With contributions from #BlackLivesMatter cofounder Patrisse Cullors, Ferguson activist and Law Professor Justin Hansford, Director of New York–based Communities United for Police Reform Joo-Hyun Kang, poet Martín Espada, and journalist Anjali Kamat, as well as articles from leading scholars Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Robin D. G. Kelley, Naomi Murakawa, Vijay Prashad, and more, Policing the Planet describes ongoing struggles from New York to Baltimore to Los Angeles, London, San Juan, San Salvador, and beyond.