Calgary police release race-based data, spurring calls for policy changes around data collection

The Calgary Police Service released new race-based data on Wednesday, marking a first step in new processes to track various forms of contact between officers and members of the public measured specifically by race.

The data includes race-based information collected in five different categories: missing persons, officer contacts, victims of violent crime, offenders of violent and property crime and use of force.

The race data analysis report highlights trends by applying the concepts of disproportionality and disparity to interactions with police when compared to the percentage of the same racial group in Calgary's population from the 2021 Statistics Canada census.

It's something the Calgary Police Commission (CPC) says it's been waiting for, as it hopes the outcome of the reports will be used to inform policing practices and the ways information is collected in the future. 

"These are data that I've been asking for since I was appointed to commission in 2020," said Heather Campbell, chair of the CPC's finance and audit committee, during the police commission meeting Wednesday afternoon.

Race data was obtained from the Calgary Police Service's (CPS) records management system, where interactions that require documentation are inputted by police officers. The race information is based on the officer's perception and not self-identification, and officers are not mandated to include race information when submitting reports. 

Additionally, race data that had what CPS describes as "conflicting race descriptions" — such as race collected as white on one record and Indigenous in another — was reported under the "racially ambiguous" category. 

In an email to CBC News, a spokesperson for CPS said 63 per cent of officers, on average, across all categories, provided race data.

Key findings suggest Indigenous and Black individuals are overrepresented — meaning disproportionately affected when compared to the population of Calgary's Black and Indigenous communities — in categories such as officer contacts, police's use of force, as well as both victims and offenders of crime, according to the data analysis. 

The report indicates Indigenous persons are 2.5 times overrepresented as victims of violent crime.

It also found that young people aged between 12 and 17 are heavily overrepresented in missing persons reports. Female Indigenous youth, particularly those with a repeated history of going missing, are the most overrepresented group in the missing person data.

However, even in presenting the report, the CPS acknowledged that there are limitations to the data that require its findings to be understood in the context of how it was collected. The organization says it recognizes this data alone is not representative of the whole picture or personal lived experiences. 

"We're not declaring this work done, we're not declaring it achieved. What we are saying is that we've started and we are going to continue," Deputy Chief Chad Tawfik told reporters Wednesday.

"There's a lot of opportunities to look at this and do some different things. I think part of that's going to be guided by what happens at the national level, at the provincial level."