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Jul 2016
29m 51s

Ep.59 - Canadian Police Are Racist Too

Canadaland
About this episode

Abdirahman Abdi, a Somali man in Ottawa, is dead after witnesses say he was beaten by cops.

 

There’s been a lot of attention on police violence against Black people in the U.S. lately. But Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Toronto, says Canada’s policing style has a lot of the same problems as the American system when it comes to dealing with racialized and Indigenous populations. Read Akwasi's piece in the Globe and Mail: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/a-hard-truth-canadas-policing-style-is-very-similar-to-the-us/article30942053/

 

Karmen James Omeasoo, a rapper who performs under the name Hellnback, talks about some of the troubles Indigenous men face with the Winnipeg police and the RCMP.  

 

Christien Levien, a criminal lawyer at Wiley and Levien, talks about how his own bad experience with police as a teenager led him to creating the app LegalSwipe to help other racialized kids stand up to cops.

 

The song sampled in the show is Hellnback’s “Caught Up,” produced by Stomp. 

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