Edmonton Police Association 10150 - 97 Avenue, Edmonton, Alberta TSK 2TS Ph: 780-496-8600 Fax: 780-428-0374 April 8, 2021 RE: Task Force Recommendations & City Council Motion The Edmonton Police Association (EPA) supports community safety, and very much values diversity, respect, and integrity within the Edmonton Police Service (EPS) and within all the communities we serve across the City. If you have the ability, integrity, and desire to become a police officer, then we welcome you and want you to join our ranks whatever your race, religion, or sexual orientation. However, the Task Force has just released a report that is insulting and demeaning to every police officer who dedicates themselves to serve the City of Edmonton and its citizens. The Task Force attacks the integrity of our officers without evidence or facts and makes recommendations based ‘on flawed and biased US-style stereotypes and assumptions about police. The Task Force alleges that racism is “baked in” to the EPS, and that Edmonton's police officers — who are in fact a diverse group of people from variety of races, cultural backgrounds, and sexual orientations and who dedicate their careers to protecting and serving the people of Edmonton — are largely a group of unwitting racists who should be fired in the name of diversity The Task Force says decisions need to be made “based on evidence, not biases or stereotypes”. We agree, But the Task Force did not follow its own advice and instead used its own anti-police biases and stereotypes to attack the women and men of this police service who dedicate their careers to serving the people of Edmonton. Their recommendations would destroy key rights in our collective agreement. The Task Force wants to rip out requirements that EPS use objective criteria to hire, promote, and retain police officers. Promotions and advancement under our collective agreement are based on competence, merit, training, and a member's time spent serving our communities. The whole point of these provisions is to allow people to advance based on an objective assessment of merit, and experience, and not be passed over based on subjective biases or stereotypes. The Task force would also destroy crucial seniority rights that allow the City to keep our more experienced and better trained police officers in the event layoffs are ever necessary. [AN AFFILIATE OF THE ALBERTA FEDERATION OF POLICE ASSOCIATIONS AND OF THE CANADIAN POLICE ASSOCIATION‘The Supreme Court of Canada calls these provisions a “cornerstone” of employee rights and says they are protected by section 2(d) of the Charter. The Task Force instead calls these provisions “handcuffs”, “barriers”, and “antiquated”, and accuses these critical protections of perpetuating “systemic racism” and “systemic discrimination”. The level of ignorance about the importance these provisions for all our members is very disturbing. The Task Force implies that it wants EPS to hire and promote new police officers based on skin colour, language, or sexual orientation. Merit is presumably a secondary consideration. This is, insulting to every recruit who applies to the EPS. They expect to be hired and promoted on their ‘own merit and character, not based on someone else’s views about the colour of their skin. Would the Task Force then also dismiss longer serving police officers based on skin colour if layoffs ever become necessary? If so, then the Task Force is just using racism to promote its own version of anti-racism. In its funding recommendations the Task Force completely ignores that violent crime and gun seizures are increasing in Edmonton, and that our City deals with higher rates of crime than most other cities in Canada including the so-called comparable cities.? The Task Force's solution? Defund the police by cutting or freezing the police budget and taking away the tools we need to protect ourselves and keep the people of Edmonton safe. The Task Force recommends that EPS start collecting “race-based data”. Maybe this would be useful, maybe not. The reality is that police officers are only being dispatched and responding to calls for service from the people of Edmonton themselves. But a main stereotype behind the Task Force's report is that EPS is already packed full of racist cops and everyone is party to systemic discrimination. If the “race-based data” shows that some minority communities have higher than average interactions with the police — because of calls from the public itself — will the Task Force, just turn this into further allegations that all police are somehow racist? The actual evidence is that our members responded to more than 192,000 calls in 2019 in Edmonton. (That number alone is misleading because Police officers encounter 10x the dispatched calls via public encounters and interactions by traffic stops, Beats, SRO's, Canine, HELP, Traffic Unit, et al. An easy estimate would be 1 million public interactions per year.) An overwhelming majority —i.e., just over 99.3%- of those calls go well and without any complaint. Less than 0.7% of all calls result in any kind of complaint about the officers, and half of the complaints are about tone of voice, listening, driving habits, etc. Only a tiny percentage of calls —ie., less than one-quarter of one percent — result in some kind of allegation of improper use of force that are then investigated by either ASIRT or Professional Standards Branch. Actual allegations of racism are very rare and are taken very seriously when they happen. If the Task Force's stereotypes about Edmonton police were true, then the evidence and numbers would reflect this — but they do not. 2 The Task Force uses per-capita spending to justify reductions in police budgets, but completely ignores that the need based on crime rates in Ottawa, Hamilton, and Winnipeg is lower than Edmonton, as well as the economic differences between the various cities. Ant AFFILIATE OF THE ALBERTA FEDERATION OF POLICE ASSOCIATIONS AND OF THE CANADIAN POLICE ASSOCIATIONThe report pays lip service to policing being important, but then attacks our police officers and the entire EPS as racist, wants police to be defunded and their budgets cut, and then recommends gutting key principles and protections around hiring, promotion, and dismissal. During the City Council discussion over the Task Force’s recommendations held on April 06, 2021, the head of the Task Force, Dr. Trimbee, stated the Association refused to meet them for discussion. This is false, inaccurate, and misleading. The Task Force sent correspondence to the Association on February 04" and we responded to them on February 25" answering their questions. On March 12" the Association sent additional correspondence to the Task Force indicating if they required further questions to be answered, to let us know. No further questions were received. The Associations also questions city council and the Task Force for its selection of the committee. Two members of the Task Force applied to become Edmonton Police Commission members and were not selected and two Task Force members have current Edmonton Police complaints outstanding. The four members should have had the integrity to recuse themselves due to their biases. The bottom line is the report is demeaning, insulting, biased, and much of it is based on US-style stereotypes about police officers. Ifthe Task Force wanted to open an “inclusive” dialogue about policing, it could not have picked a worse way to start. Thank you, Gl le Sgt. Michee Eliott President, Edmonton Police Association [AN AFFILIATE OF THE ALBERTA FEDERATION OF POLICE ASSOCIATIONS AND OF THE CANADIAN POLICE ASSOCIATION