Police scandals are symptomatic of much larger issues

Source: The Conversation – Canada

Claims of police misconduct are common in Canada and there appears to be no end in sight. This isn’t a recent development, but one that’s becoming more publicized because there’s now greater scrutiny of state institutions.

Recent allegations of racist conduct among 16 Montréal police officers, including instances where dreadlocks were taken from Black men and kept as “trophies,” illustrate the pervasive nature of systemic racism in policing.

Police collecting and displaying trophies is nothing new and parallels the violence of lynch mob vigilantism.

In Montréal, concerns about discriminatory policing have even been documented in interactions involving family members of the city’s mayor.

While these instances of police misconduct aren’t surprising to those who experience the everyday violence of policing, the latest allegations draw attention to the broader issue of whether the promise of police reform will ever be realized.

Calls for action

In the wake of the Montréal scandal, there are calls for an independent investigation, the public release of police oversight reports and to speed up the use of body cameras.

But these largely reactive measures fail to substantively address the root causes of police racism. Questions about the effectiveness of police reform measures have been raised by a chorus of voices, including retired police officers.

The Montréal allegations should be considered the tip of the iceberg since police misconduct is a nationwide issue:

Community leaders called for greater transparency after it was revealed that a Hamilton Police Service officer who shared racist and extremist social media posts was still employed by the police service.
An RCMP officer in British Columbia was fired over racist and sexist group chat messages shared with other officers.
In response to claims of officers using police databases to meet women and larger concerns about gendered violence in the Ottawa Police Service, Chief Eric Stubbs said that officers unwilling to change should quit.
The ongoing fallout from Project South, where multiple Toronto police officers were implicated in an organized crime investigation, prompted Ontario to implemented a zero-tolerance approach to unauthorized police database breaches.

An impact on public trust

These are just a few examples out of many, but they still risk destroying public trust in police forces across the country. When public trust erodes, it undermines the officers who face daily danger and unpredictability to serve their communities. Ultimately, rooting out misconduct is a win-win that protects both citizens and the police officers who serve our communities.

Focusing on specific incidences of misconduct, however, obscures the systemic nature of these issues. An inquest into the shooting death of Eisha Hudson, an Indigenous teenager shot and killed by police, featured the Winnipeg Police Service’s lawyer challenging expert testimony on systemic racism.

This creates an immediate disconnect between the Winnipeg police force’s stated commitment to reform and the arguments made by its legal counsel. The contrast between what police services say and what their officials do signals a broader issue that calls into question the authenticity of the institutional commitment to reform efforts.

The inquest into Hudson’s death raised the prospect of race-based data collection as a potential reform strategy to address decades-long concerns about anti-Indigenous racism in the Winnipeg Police Service. Winnipeg Police has now committed to committed to collecting race-based data.

Reform efforts fall short

Police services in Ontario have been collecting race-based data since 2020. Despite the collection of race-based use of force data, little has changed with respect to the over-representation of certain racial groups in police-reported data.

Similarly, there are growing concerns regarding changes to Ontario’s use of force reporting framework that better insulates police from criticism.

Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Montréal’s mayor, vowed to accelerate the implementation of body cameras for the city’s police officers. But critical criminology research documents how police services and the media tout body cameras as catalysts for reform despite limited empirical evidence that they make a difference.

An increasing number of researchers argue that body camera footage has been turned into a media spectacle for public consumption, while some research critically engages with police accounts of body camera footage. While the promise of body cameras has a seductive appeal, its impact on reducing police misconduct is likely overstated.

Where to go from here

The question of why reform efforts fall short remains unanswered. One explanation is that there’s a tremendous degree of resistance to external oversight and reform in the policing community.

A report by the police force in London, Ont., for example, obtained via freedom-of-information legislation, demonstrated how white male officers resist efforts to bolster diversity among the force’s ranks. The report suggested that officers felt the quality and effectiveness of policing had been adversely affected by improving diversity among its ranks.

This reluctance to address the under-representation of racialized groups is a symptom of a broader issue for police forces in Canada.

Experts now theorize that policing functions as a social movement rather than an apolitical state institution, revealing a broader political agenda in how law enforcement responds to calls for reform.

More specifically, the concept of the “thin blue line” frequently relies on racialized and militaristic imagery to draw a sharp divide between the supposed “civilization” of law enforcement and the alleged “savagery” of the communities they police.

Structural forces must be addressed

At the same time, police unions mobilize a set of messaging strategies to rally against efforts to address systemic issues. This suggests that police reform has stalled largely because a powerful political undercurrent is actively working against it.

The racist conduct directed towards racialized residents in Montréal is therefore not the consequence of individual prejudice, but of a broader political system that frames some people as being “deserving” of state violence.

Achieving true police reform is complex and cannot be solved with quick fixes like body cameras or race-based data collection. Instead, it requires a fundamental shift in how we discuss crime — reframing it not as an individual or cultural flaw, but as a direct byproduct of broader structural forces.

Tandeep Sidhu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/14/police-scandals-are-symptomatic-of-much-larger-issues/