WRPS changing methods for analyzing race-based data

A Waterloo Regional Police car is shown in this file photo.

Waterloo Regional Police Services Board members reviewed annual reports on both intelligence notes and use of force, including race-based data, at a meeting on Wednesday.

According to police, there are two ways of analyzing the data. The first compares race-based statistics to local population demographics to show if a racialized group is disproportionately represented in the data.

The second, which police say they prefer, compares the proportion of racialized groups captured in police data to the proportion of white individuals captured in police data to show if there is disparity.

Waterloo Region Police Service (WRPS) data shows WRPS disproportionately created intelligence notes and used force against Black and Middle Eastern people in 2022.

Waterloo regional police’s data shows 14 per cent of the 325 use of force incidents last year involved people who officers perceived as Black, despite Black people accounting for only five percent the local population, according to 2021 census data.

Six per cent of use of force incidents involved Middle Eastern people, who account for three per cent of the location population.

White people, who account for 70 per cent of the local population were involved in 71 per cent of use of force incidents.

Waterloo Regional Police Service Chief Mark Crowell noted the number of police interactions and arrests that result in use of force is small, less than 0.1 per cent

“These are dynamic incidents involving violence where our officers are responding and making split second decisions,” Crowell said.

Insp. Jason Boutcher said police began to incorporated equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in training several years ago and are committed to that.

“I think right now we’re going to maintain that trajectory, we’re going to maintain the incorporation of EDI principles wherever we can,” Boutcher said. “There’s really nothing can move us off of status quo.”

MOVE TOWARD NEW METHOD OF DATA ANALYSIS

Waterloo regional police say they’re moving away from using population demographics as a benchmark to analyze race-based data. They say it wrongly assumes everyone has the same risk of being involved in a use of force incident and census data can underestimate the number of racialized people in the region.

Instead, racial disparity reporting focuses on answering the question, “given similar circumstances, do racialized and White individuals experience similar outcomes,” Mandy Williams, manager of WRPS Strategic Services branch told the meeting.

“When we calculate racial disparity what we’re doing is we’re comparing use of force incidents involving Black or Middle Eastern individuals to the proportion of incidents involving white individuals,” Williams said. “Without considering any other contextual factors [including population demographics] we see no evidence of overrepresentation of racialized individuals.”

Police data indicates across all use of force incidents, Black people were more likely to be involved in incidents categorized as ‘highest use of force,’ where officers pointed or discharged their firearms. They were also overrepresented in ‘lowest use of force’ incidents – where officers deployed impact weapons, police animals or physical control.

Police were more likely to employ ‘intermediate’ use of force options, which they define as when an officer draws a firearm, in incidents involving white people than Black people.

INTELLIGENCE NOTES

As for intelligence notes, of the 555 notes officers made about people last year as part of an investigation or intelligence gathering, 28 per cent involved Black people. Two per cent involved Indigenous people. Five per cent involved Middle Eastern people and 60 per cent involved white people.

Williams said caution is needed in interpreting the data because the numbers are small and changes of just a few people can make a large difference.

Questioned by reporters, Chief Crowell said the overrepresentation of racialized people in intelligence notes is not a police-only issue.

“This is not street checks. This is not carding. This is us making a very transparent and accountable release of our data related to those involved in criminal activity, so what requires improvement is the community dialogue about those involved in criminal behaviour,” Crowell said. “This is not over policing... this is an all of community discussion about issues of crime in our community.”

Ontario police forces have been required to collect race-based data, per a provincial directive, since 2020.