HALIFAX—Justice Minister Mark Furey has called for an immediate but temporary halt to the use of police street checks across Nova Scotia and is planning to introduce regulations to eliminate racial discrimination from the controversial practice.

Furey announced his decision in a news release on Wednesday afternoon, three weeks after a landmark report confirmed that Black people in Halifax are being disproportionately targeted.

He told reporters Wednesday he believes street checks can be a useful policing tool when used appropriately, but when they’re based on racial discrimination they are “simply unacceptable and a breach of one’s human rights.”

“Strict regulation strikes the delicate balance between protecting individual liberties and police responsibilities,” he said.

The March report that prompted Furey’s action on street checks was authored by Toronto criminologist Scot Wortley. He found that between 2006 and 2017, Black people were targeted nearly six times more than white people, with Black men between the ages of 15 and 34 the most vulnerable of all.

The results were not surprising to members of the Black community, who had been pointing out racial discrimination in the practice for years.

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When the Wortley report came out, many community activists and both opposition parties at the legislature urged Furey to issue an immediate moratorium.

Three days later, more than a hundred people marched through the streets of Halifax demanding consultation with the people most affected — those between the ages of 15 and 34 — and a ban on the practice.

Furey said taking immediate action would have been the “easy approach,” but he wanted to take time to analyze Wortley’s options and consult with community.

Wortley suggested two paths for responding to his findings: ban street checks entirely or regulate them to ensure racial discrimination would stop. In the case of regulation, he recommended a moratorium while creating the new rules.

The Department of Justice has assembled a group of community stakeholders to develop the regulations, which will be based on Wortley’s recommendations.

Wortley laid out more than 20 recommendations for regulation, and nearly 20 more for improving police-community relations. He said there’s room to evaluate racial discrimination in other forms of police stops — not just street checks — and the stakeholder group is meant to consider the five recommendations on that topic, too.

While Furey directed all Nova Scotia police to suspend street checks of pedestrians in public areas and passengers in motor vehicles, they can continue to conduct traffic stops to ensure compliance under the Motor Vehicle Act and the Criminal Code.

Robin McNeil, acting chief of Halifax Regional Police, issued a formal response to the moratorium Wednesday afternoon, saying police would take the necessary steps to implement it.

Earlier this week the Halifax police board of commissioners recommended that Halifax Regional Police and Halifax district RCMP immediately suspend the practice and apologize to Black Nova Scotians for the discriminatory practice.

Furey said an apology from the government was worth considering, but he was reticent to offer one himself.

“This is a bigger discussion than street checks and an apology. I don’t know how many times I can express that these behaviours are unacceptable.

“Is there a formal apology coming from government? That may follow some of the discussions, that may form part of the outcomes of the work.”

Halifax councillor Lindell Smith said Furey’s announcement was a “pleasant surprise,” but he would like to see more recognition of the harm street checks have caused the Black community.

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“An apology is just one way of recognizing that pain. If they’re hesitant, that’s fine, but everyone has to take ownership,” Smith said in an interview.

“The commission has apologized, hopefully our chief does, and I think it’s important that the province does as well. All of us have a hand in it.”

Trayvone Clayton, a 20-year-old activist who has been outspoken about his own experiences with street checks in Halifax, said the moratorium is one step toward his ultimate goal—a total ban.

“We’ve been waiting for years and years and years for the street checks to be looked at this kind of way. It’s been happening to us Blacks for a very long time. It feels good to see that it’s actually catching attention,” Clayton told the Star after Wednesday’s announcement.

Clayton was stopped by police as a 16-year-old as he was leaving a party in the South End of Halifax. He says the officer who stopped him put him in a chokehold and pinned him to the ground while he was walking home alone.

Over the past year, Clayton has been a voice for Black youth in the city, calling on police to put an end to street checks once and for all.

“I’m taking this one as a win because this is something that I’ve been talking about a lot, but now we’ve got to keep digging deeper to reach that gold, and that main piece of gold is banning street checks forever.”

Sylvia Parris, a member of Halifax’s Black community, called for a moratorium on street checks in 2017 when she was a member of the board of police commissioners.

“It’s good to be heard,” said Parris in an interview. “We can read into it a recognition that it was a (Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms) violation, and that there is a commitment to do something.”

Still, Parris hesitated to call the minister’s announcement a win for the Black community.

“When I hear suspended, I still get a bit of a discomfort feeling in my stomach,” she said.

Parris, a member of the African Nova Scotian Decade for People of African Descent Coalition, hopes the Department of Justice will heed some of the coalition’s recommendations.

It has been calling for a complete ban on street checks since the Wortley report was issued, and maintained that position in an open letter to Furey last week.

Furey said regulation alone will not mitigate racial discrimination in policing and his department is currently working on a training program for all officers in the province. The training will focus on the findings of the Wortley report and reinforce police codes of conduct and Canadian charter rights.

With files from Zane Woodford

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