The Calgary Police Service released a pair of reports to the public, and to Police Commissioners on Sept. 25, that for the first time outline in detail race-based interactions between the public and the service.

Among the report’s findings were police interactions were disproportionately overrepresented towards Indigenous and Black Canadians, as compared to the 2021 Statistics Canada Census data for Calgary, and depending on the context of police interaction, underrepresented towards racialized non-Indigenous and non-Black Canadians.

The reports also found that the use of force by the Calgary Police towards the public was comparable to the race of arrested individuals, and for those contacted by police—save that of Indigenous individuals, who saw an eight percent difference between arrests with race data (22 per cent) versus use of force with race data (14 per cent).

Part of that could be explained by the focus on areas serviced by Calgary Transit, such as LRT stations across the city, through the service’s Safe Public Spaces Action Plan.

A limitation on the reporting, said Deputy Chief Chad Tawfik who oversees CPS’ Bureau of Organizational Performance, was that in Alberta—as it is in much of Canada—it is not mandatory for police officers to report the race of individuals they interact with.

“Based on our records, we’re around the 60 to 70 per cent because it isn’t mandated that they actually document [race] in all cases. But [officers] have that opportunity in some of our systems, so they will do so. So when we did the analysis, we leveraged different data sets to increase that reliability up into the 90 per cent of our records,” Tawfik said.

“We know there’s data limitations to it from the collection side and the officer perception side. So to try to do a deeper analysis, that’s going to be our next stage, which will also involve qualitative feedback from community.”

Much of the data collected was based on the perception of officers as to what the race of an individual was, unless there was a self-declaration by an individual or information from prior interactions within CPS record management systems.

That lack of objective criteria and perception of officers was identified as a limitation in the accuracy of the reports.

“I think the public can expect to see us engage with them around it, and looking at opportunities to inform our data and our analysis because numbers and graphs are one thing, and what a person experiences on a day to day is an entirely different thing,” Tawfik said.

The Government of Alberta does not record self-identified race-based data on driver’s licences, which CPS identified as a way that could provide more accurate race-based data for police interactions.

That ask for licence data was put forward by Commissioner Jennifer Wyness, who asked that CPS look into more automatic ways of providing race-based data rather than perceptions.

She also asked that CPS look at reporting on the race of officers as part of future reports.

Commissioner Heather Campbell rejected the idea of CPS using AI for racial recognition, saying that it is currently too inaccurate to be reliable for use by the service.

Reports to spark conversations about racialized policing

Deputy Chief Tawfik said that there was a hope that the release of the reports would lead to dialog with Calgarians, and ultimately to address needed changes to systems internal to CPS, or external.

“I think this opens up opportunities to talk about what their experiences are with the Calgary Police Service and with others because people bring those with them to every interaction, their interactions with Calgary police, any other police agency. So, I think it really opens the door to dialogue,” he said.

As part of the reporting, there was an implicit goal by the service to not diminish anyone’s personal perception of their individual interactions with police officers, Tawfik said.

“Because someone’s personal experiences may be very different from what they see on the graphs or on the charts, and we know that, given the data limitations, that that could very well be the case. So, I want to be cautious there,” he said.

“The danger is always there that people might run with a stat or one graph and make some declarations that are more over-assuming, but that’s why we’ll try to do our best to educate and share what we’ve done.”