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.”

Race-based data closely mirrors other population data outside of general census

One of the findings of the reports was that across the board, the data tended to be closer in demographic breakdown to other measures of population such as Calgary Homeless Foundation's annual point-in-time count, than the 2021 census.

Although, said Deputy Chief Tawfik, the service did not perform any statistical analysis on their data set to see if there are correlations around socio-economic factors that could provide more clarity as to why the data is similar.

He said that remains a next step for the service and that they were looking at working with community partners to share the data in a way that also respected Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy laws.

"We're putting that data together and looking at what can we do about that, and is there a root cause that we may be able to address? In education and health, I'm sure they would see some similar things in their data sets," he said.

As part of the reporting, CPS did an analysis of over and under-representation by race.

Those reports found that for use of force, there was a disproportionality versus the general population of between 1.2 to 2.4 times for Black individuals depending on gender, between 4.1 and 6.8 for Indigenous individuals, between 0.1 and 0.3 times for racialized individuals, and 0.9 times for white individuals.

That data was further broken down by the type of use of force used, such as conductive energy weapons—also known as Tasers—and the use of police service dogs.

The reports did not include the use of firearms, something Deputy Chief Tawfik said was a result of that data being in the hands of the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team.

"We may not have the up-to-date information for that data set or that data year, but we are looking at maybe adding that down the road. We started with the ones that, you know, we thought we could delve into," he said.

"The other thing with those is it's quite a small data set, and so the percentages would be very high in every direction because of the small data set for those types of occurrences."

On average, the Calgary Police Service has contact with the public more than 500,000 times per year, with recorded officer contact being about a quarter of that number. In 2023, between use-of-force and intermediate use-of-force using conducted energy weapons, firearms, or pepper spray, the total number was 927.

The reports also examined the data collected on the race of victims of crime, which found that Indigenous Calgarians were 2.5 times more likely to be the victims of violent crime.

Deputy Chief Tawfik said that other aspects of the reports, such as in the areas of missing persons, showed that while there was a disparity of race in reporting there was no discrepancy in how CPS responded.

Calgary Police were able to locate 99.9 per cent of all missing persons in 2023, with most people regardless of race found in under two-days for youth, and under three for adults.

Commissioner Heather Campbell thanked the service for their effort to find everyone regardless of race.

"The findings on missing persons are crucial and shouldn't be minimized. In Toronto and Peel, they were black and they were brown, they were gay and they were trans, and when they went missing and were eventually murdered, the police didn't look that hard for them. In Calgary, CPS looks for everyone and finds 99 per cent of missing people in Calgary," she said.

Reports followed requests of Calgary community in 2020

Calgary Police Chief Mark Neufeld said that the reports were prepared for the public as a result of the hearings that were held on systemic racism in Calgary in 2020.

"The community is still wanting to know, 'what are you going to do with this?' It's not about what we're going to do, it's what we're going to do together, so nobody is disadvantaged by it in any way," he said.

Calgary saw the largest-ever protest held in the city in 2020, with Calgarians in the tens of thousands taking to the streets to demand systemic changes and the recognition that Black lives matter.

"For four years, we have worked concurrently with our partners nationally on the development of data standards while developing our own interim methodology. Today, we are sharing the results of the analysis conducted by the Calgary Police Service as additional efforts towards national framework remain underway," Chief Neufeld said.

Commissioner Campbell asked Chief Neufeld to lead in asking all of Alberta's police services to engage in a similar analytical approach.

Rebecca Davidson, Manager of the CPS Analytical Unit has been working on behalf of the service to engage on a national level with Statistics Canada to improve race-based data in policing said the service.

Chair Shawn Cornett, made a motion to have CPS return a report to the commission in January of 2025 on which partner organizations picked up the data. It was passed unanimously by commission.

That data, said Ward 8 Councillor Walcott, would be welcomed by Calgary's city council—although he said that data was likely to be the same as what advocates have been saying for the past six years in multiple reports.

"That is absolutely information that the city, of Council, The City of Calgary, needs. It's the information that our public needs, information that our public demanded from the CPS years ago, and it's the information that's going to drive forward major policy decisions.

"But I'm frustrated because the commitment to this work comes from a very simple thing is: how do you support keeping people from having these interactions with the police?"

He said that it raises too many questions about why proactive steps have been ignored, or why those initiatives have been underfunded.

"And so this data, while I appreciate the racial equity office, while I appreciate it that is that deals with what happens after people come into contact with police, when are we going to get real about taking action in advance of those problems."

"And the police are a partner in that, whether they like it or not. And I think they need to get more serious about it."

Coun. Walcott pointed to the recent death of Jon Wells, a member of the Blood Tribe, while in police custody as an example.

"We're less than 10 days past an innocent man looking at an officer, looking at a taser down the barre saying, 'I don't want to die.' And then he is pepper sprayed, pinned, assaulted, starts vomiting, bleeding, has a spit bag put over head, and today we have whatever the outcome of race based data collection is."