There seems to be a lack of urgency to address the mental health concerns of Black men in Canada, which can result in horrifying and deadly encounters with police.
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In the aftermath of Adam Toledo’s death, police and a prosecutor framed the incident as a confrontation with an armed male holding a gun. Should reporters have been so quick to accept that version?
Police in riot gear line up against protesters during clashes in Kenosha, Wis., in August 2020 following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, two days earlier.
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We need to clarify the role of the police, to promote a more justice-oriented style of police leadership and to put in place long-term mechanisms of accountability to support and sustain change.
People learn racism from the culture that surrounds them and media they consume, but that doesn’t need to be the end of the story.
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If you’re American – regardless of the color of your skin – racism structures how you think. Changing the system should change these implicit biases.
A portrait of George Floyd hangs on a street light pole as police officers stand guard at the Third Police Precinct during a face off with a group of protesters on May 27, 2020 in Minneapolis.
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Shervin Assari, Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science
Police killings of black men gain widespread attention, but black men’s life-and-death issues are ignored on a daily basis, a physician who studies health gaps explains.
The thin blue line remains disproportionately white, despite diversity gains.
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Diversity among officers lags behind the general population. But is police culture a greater problem when it comes to combating excessive force?
Darren Spencer at a memorial for his childhood friend Saheed Vassell, a 34-year-old father of a teenage son, fatally shot by police in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, April 5, 2018.
AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews
Police are almost always the first responders in cases of mental health crisis. Too often these encounters turn bad, even deadly. But police were never meant to be in charge of US mental health care.