Racial bias and 911 calls: Montreal police train dispatchers to focus on facts
CTV
When someone calls 911 to report a crime, a dispatcher has just seconds to react. When all goes to plan, police will be on their way in a matter of moments, ready to respond to an emergency. However, the responding officer will only have seconds’ worth of information to work with, and sometimes, that caller’s information is affected by racial bias, experts say.
When someone calls 911 to report a crime, a dispatcher has just seconds to react. When all goes to plan, police will be on their way in a matter of moments, ready to respond to an emergency.
However, the responding officer will only have seconds’ worth of information to work with, and sometimes, that caller’s information is affected by racial bias, experts say.
“A good example would be when someone calls regarding a group of young Black men in a park, and the caller adds that they’re ‘probably part of a street gang’,” said Dammya Loiseau, a 911 supervisor at the Montreal police department (SPVM).
“The general caller is not equipped to validate if that person is from a street gang,” she said.
“[But] when we put, verbatim, ‘they are probably part of a street gang’… the police officer’s reaction is not the same, because they are going to be ready for [that sort of situation].”
Loiseau is part of an internal push within the SPVM to change the way dispatchers relay information to officers.
She’s one of a small group of agents behind a new training program that encourages dispatchers to restrict the information they give police to facts only.
