The growing militarization of police—from SWAT teams to so-called ‘rescue’ vehicles—is under scrutiny
Guests take photos of the Brandon Police Service's new armoured response vehicle during the vehicle's unveiling at Assiniboine Community College's Public Safety Training Centre at their Victoria Avenue East campus on Thursday.
Behind a barricade at the north end of the block, the 22-year-old found the ARV parked on the front lawn of a home, and heard a voice blaring from the vehicle’s speaker system ordering occupants inside to surrender. About an hour later, police had eight suspects in custody, some with sundry edged and blunt weapons in their possession. A search of the house turned up a .22-calibre semi-automatic rifle, bear mace and a BB gun.
Floyd’s death sparked protests in Minneapolis, where widespread public outrage resulted in a wholesale revision of the relationship between police and the people they’re sworn to protect. The movement quickly spread throughout the U.S., into Canada and around the world. Protests in this country called on governments to root out systemic racism pervading the criminal justice system, and to defund police.
Another part of the plan is keeping these elite units connected to the community by dispatching them on routine police calls, such as traffic collisions, rather than reserving them for tactical missions. “This isn’t a SWAT deployment where our armoured rescue vehicle is out, and guys are hanging out the side of the vehicle with ballistic helmets,” he says.
Not all of the cities studied between 2007 and 2016 saw an increase in annual tactical deployments. Calgary saw a marked drop in that time frame, from 1,556 deployments to 619. Ottawa had fewer than other jurisdictions, fluctuating between 100 to 200 per year. Vancouver, too, was not far behind, hovering between 200 to 300 deployments.
Not all Brandonites see it that way. Critics like Alaynia, the Black Lives Matter organizer and a 20-year-old student at Assiniboine Community College, see it as an implied threat, especially with the names of the Black victims of police violence resonating in their minds, listed on signs and chanted at rallies protesting police brutality.
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