Crisis in Canada's Policing

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.