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The overrepresentation of Indigenous people and racial minorities in street checks by the Vancouver police is “reasonable and plausible”.

This is according to a report submitted to the Vancouver Police Board, which meets Thursday (February 20).

The report was prepared by the Pyxis Consulting Group Inc., the firm selected by the board to conduct an external review of street checks.

The finding was met with concern by the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs (UBCIC), B.C. Civil Liberties Association, and Black Lives Matter-Vancouver.

In a joint statement, the groups pointed out that “race-based over-policing and pretext-policing are occurring” in the city.

According to Chief Don Tom, vice president of the UBCIC, it is “outrageous that the reviewers maintain that the disproportionate street checks of Indigenous people and racialized minorities are ‘plausible’ and ‘reasonable.’”

“We reject this finding as it justifies the over-policing, stigmatization, and lived reality of systemic racism our people face,” Tom said in the statement.

The Pyxis report validated a 2018 Vancouver Police Department report concluding that street checks are being done free of racial bias.

The VPD report was prepared in response to a complaint filed by the UBCIC and BCCLA.

According to the Pyxis report, the rationale for street checks has been explained in the 2018 VPD report, which is that the checks targeted repeat offenders involved in criminal activity.

“This report does not seek to counter any of the explanations put forward, as they are reasonable and plausible given the nature of demographics within the city, movements of people around high-crime areas, and the overrepresentation of Indigenous and minorities in the Downtown Eastside, where most street checks occur,” Pyxis said about its report.

Pyxis cited 2018 data showing that Caucasians accounted for 55 percent of street checks, followed by Indigenous people at 18 percent, and blacks, six percent.

The numbers are consistent with figures mentioned by the UBCIC and BCCLA in their 2018 complaint.

According to the complaint, Indigenous people make up about two percent of Vancouver’s population, and they represented 16 percent of street chekcs in 2017.

Moreover, black persons represented five percent of 2017 street checks, but they comprise only one percent of the population.

“While not specified in the complaint, Caucasians were also statistically overrepresented in the street check data; while comprising 46% of Vancouver’s population, Caucasians made up 57% of those that were street checked in 2017,” the 2018 VPD report noted.

For its part, the Pyxis report noted that “simply presenting” the 2018 data “makes no commentary on whether or not there was bias in these encounters”.

“It is just as plausible, without any contrary indications, that these encounters were based purely on behaviours that the police were met with and the available population (not residential population) that was prominent in the area,” Pyxis wrote.

Noting that just like in the VPD’s report, Pyxis stated that with respect to its review of 2018 data, the “prior history” of subjects to street checks was “extensive”.

“In all, nearly 89% of the individual subjects were chargeable in other police criminal investigations before the 2018 street check occurred,” Pyxis wrote.

The firm noted that on average, “each individual had been ‘chargeable” in 24 separate criminal investigations before the 2018 street check occurred”.

According to Pyxis, this “supports and validates the conclusion reached by the original” VPD report that “street checks were most often initiated on individuals with extensive criminal histories and who were undoubtedly known to police”.

Pyxis reported that over 40 percent of street checks were “justified with a bylaw stop”.

Also, 25 percent were justified as possible criminal behavior.

“Overall, very few of these street checks appears on its face to be unwarranted or unreasonable,” according to Pyxis.

In the joint statement by the UBCIC, BCCLA, and Black Lives Matter-Vancouver, BCCLA staff counsel Latoya Farrell noted that the Pyxis review “presumes it is beneficial for police to stop people who have ‘prior criminality,’ even though there is no legal footing for street checks and collection of personal information outside of having reasonable suspicion and probable cause that an offence is occurring or is about to occur”.

“We are very concerned the Vancouver Police Board will entrench the practice of these street checks even though there is no legal basis to do so,” Farrell stated.

Meghan McDermott, policy director with the BCCLA, stated that the review “confirms that the VPD has been arbitrarily stopping people, a practice that has severe impacts on people’s lives and sense of safety”.

“The review, however, provides no evidence that these arbitrary street checks are useful or that they enhance public safety,” McDermott said. “Rather, the opposite; street checks allow for illegal detentions, racial discrimination, invasion of privacy, and collection of personal information.”