There are currently at least four major calls to defund police forces in Canada. Here, hundreds of people participate in a Black Lives Matter demonstration in front of Saskatchewan’s Legislative Building in Regina on June 2, 2020.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Mark Taylor
Another world is possible when we defund and reimagine policing as we know it. A review of police budgets could mean more money towards community initiatives.
Bicycle police officers keep an eye on Trinity Bellwoods Park in Toronto on Sunday, May 24, 2020. Warm weather and a reduction in COVID-19 restrictions has many looking to the outdoors for relief.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
The provincial government has funding to support non-police safety and well-being initiatives — but 99 per cent of it just supplements police budgets.
Actors Dennis Franz and Jimmy Smits on the set of ‘NYPD Blue.’
Mitchell Gerber/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images
For decades, there’s been a concerted effort by law enforcement to ensure their perspectives – and not those of people being policed – dominate prime-time television.
Calls to ‘defund the police’ are growing across the US.
hkalkan via Shutterstock
Iraq, Guatemala and the autonomous region of Bougainville have all tried to demilitarise their police forces – with varying degrees of success.
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Will police accept the challenge of ending
Māori over-representation at every stage of the criminal justice system in Aotearoa-New Zealand?
Anti-racism demonstrators take a knee near Toronto Police Headquarters during a march, June 6, 2020.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn
There is no good police versus bad police. Police are police. They are the states’ organ of repression. There are a myriad of better scenarios than the current one.
There have already been at least 100 instances of journalists being assaulted or harassed while covering recent protests.
Nick Lehr/The Conversation
For almost a century, American popular culture has perpetuated the idea that only journalists working in foreign countries could be in danger.
Sheriffs deputies in riot gear move in on protesters in Los Angeles, California.
Photo by David McNew/Getty Images
The militarization of local police departments has been associated with an increase in police violence against citizens.
Gregory and Travis McMichael who killed Ahmaud Arbery during an attempted citizen’s arrest.
Glynn County Detention Center via AP
Laws enabling citizens to apprehend suspects, which date back to medieval England, were historically used in the US to suppress slave revolts.
French crime drama Spiral.
BBC
Police officers put themselves and their families in harm’s way in order to stop crime and protect us. But who protects them?
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Fears of looming totalitarianism are unfounded, despite some valid concerns about new COVID-19 laws.
A woman waits for a streetcar in Toronto on April 16, 2020. The many Black people working in essential jobs do not have the luxury of staying home during the pandemic.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
Black lives are further in peril in a time of COVID-19. Subject to death on both the public health and policing fronts, we will not be silent.
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Nearly 90% of emergency service staff have experienced stress, low mood and poor mental health.
Police keeping a safe distance from patients awaiting COVID-19 tests at a New York hospital.
John Minchillo/AP Photo
With officers being hit by illness, arrests have dropped during the coronavirus crisis. Meanwhile crime rates have remained static, or even fallen. Is it time to rethink policing?
AAP Image/Dave Hunt
Many people are unaware of their rights and options if they receive a penalty notice, especially if they think they’ve done nothing wrong.
A change in responsibility.
Andrew Matthews/PA
We need to be clearer about what’s at stake when deciding how, for what purpose, and against whom, police authority is deployed.
AAP Image/Joel Carrett
We need any new laws on what we can and can’t do to be clear to all, applied consistently and transparently, which is not the case at the moment.
Caroline Flack leaving Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court where she plead not guilty to assaulting boyfriend Lewis Burton.
Jonathan Brady/PA Wire/PA Images
It is important that police forces and the CPS are able to recognise that coercive control and couple violence are different and require different handling.
President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally on Jan. 28 in Wildwood, New Jersey.
AP Photo/Mel Evans
In a survey, Trump supporters showed the lowest faith in the Supreme Court, the federal government, the media and other pillars of society.
Members of the RCMP look on as supporters of the Wet'suwet'en Nation block a road outside of RCMP headquarters in Surrey, B.C., on Jan. 16, 2020.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward
The RCMP have long been responsible for violence against Indigenous people.