Alberta watchdog questions benefit of collecting race data
Position of the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team is out of step with other provinces
The Globe and Mail reports that the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) – the agency that investigates serious incidents involving police in Alberta – claims to be unclear about the value of tracking data on the race of people killed or injured by officers. This position, the Globe notes, runs counter to police watchdogs in Ontario and British Columbia which do collect race data.
Kim Stanton weighed in on the issue:
Kim Stanton, a constitutional and Aboriginal law lawyer at Goldblatt Partners LLP, noted that racial data can help identify discrimination, establish patterns, and measure the severity of misconduct or failings.
“RCMP and other police forces used to not gather any data on [missing, murdered Indigenous women and girls] either and that obscured the number of Indigenous women and girls who were being murdered and disappeared,” she said in a statement. “Collection of race-based data is an important way to identify systemic issues in our society and to increase police transparency and accountability.”