Debate over police powers missing key voices: women and minorities

Lack of representation is a problem, both in terms of optics as well as substance:

Here in Canada, to say that police unions are boys’ clubs – and white boys’ clubs at that – understates just how glaring the absence of women and visible minorities is.

Let’s start with Toronto, “the world’s most diverse city.” Of the eight board members of the Toronto Police Association headed by Mr. McCormack, all eight are male and seven are white. This in a force of 7,650 members, in which 30 per cent are women and 23 per cent are visible minorities, who police a city where 51 per cent of the residents are women and almost the same percentage are members of a visible minority.

Canada’s second-largest city fares no better. The Montreal police union has six executive members. All are men and all are white.

Calgary? Of seven board members, all are men, one is non-white.

Ottawa: of eight members, all men, one non-white.Halifax: five members, all men, all white.

Vancouver only lists its president (male, white) on its website, and Winnipeg doesn’t list any of its 13 board members.

RCMP officers are forbidden from forming a union. But Canada’s two largest provincial police unions mirror their city cousins: the Ontario Provincial Police Association has seven board members. Six are men and all are white. The Sûreté du Québec has six executive members and 12 board members. All are men, all are white.

While I would not go as far as his generalizations about men and women (and visible minorities) as he does below, representation is also about how decisions and actions are perceived by the broader, and more diverse, public.

But why does this matter? What’s the connection between lower levels of testosterone and less incendiary rhetoric? And not just rhetoric. When police line up outside the courtroom to defend one of their own accused of a crime, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a policewoman pushing the media away. And when the New York cops turned their backs on Mayor de Blasio outside the church last week where he was to speak at the funeral of Raphael Ramos, not a policewoman’s back was to be seen.

The connection, of course, is that women are less violent than men, certainly in deed and often in word as well. (in ‘thought’ we’ll never know). Women are more empathic than men. Women make more rational decisions than men, in everything from investing to … shooting. While women make up 20 per cent to 35 per cent of many police forces, the number of female police officers caught using excessive force ranges from tiny to non-existent.

Debate over police powers missing key voices: women and minorities – The Globe and Mail.