The B.C. police complaint commissioner has appointed a retired judge to review the case of a New Westminster resident who alleges he was racially profiled by local police during a “street check.”
Clayton Pecknold has appointed David Pendleton, a retired provincial court judge, to review the case of Dr. Sundar-Jovian Radheshwar, who filed a complaint to the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner in November 2020 about being stopped by two New Westminster Police Department officers.
The complaint was investigated by the Abbotsford Police Department, which filed a report saying that allegations of abuse of authority and neglect of duty “did not appear to be substantiated.”
In an Aug. 20 report, however, Pecknold disagreed with the conclusions.
“I am of the view that the discipline authority’s decision is incorrect as it relates to the application of the facts to the relevant NWPD policy, law, and jurisprudence surrounding police investigative detention,” Pecknold writes about appointing Pendleton.
Radheshwar was walking down a street in New Westminster on July 27, 2020 when he was stopped by two NWPD officers.
“According to the respondent members, the complainant from a distance appeared to resemble an arrestable person whom they were seeking in the area,” says the OPCC report. “During the interaction in which the complainant stopped to speak with the respondent members (captured on CCTV video), the complainant alleged that the officers asked him whether he was ‘Abdul’ and if he had his identification on him, and remarked that he appeared to resemble ‘Abdul.’ After the Complainant responded that he was not ‘Abdul’ and that he did not have any identification on him, the respondent members departed without apologizing. The complainant alleged that he was stopped and racially profiled because he fit the description of a generic ‘middle eastern male.’”
The Abbotsford police investigation concluded that Radheshwar was “briefly delayed but not detained in a manner to trigger the obligations concomitant with an investigative detention.”
Pecknold disagreed with that conclusion.
“There is sufficient evidence to support a conclusion that, while brief, this matter did include a detention of the complainant,” Pecknold wrote. “During this incident the respondent members were in uniform, approaching the complainant directly, and calling out to him. The complainant was walking with his back to the officers and, upon hearing the officers, stopped his travel and turned. The respondent members were looking for a person they had lawful authority to arrest and, upon interaction with the complainant, were operating on the subjective belief that the complainant may have been the arrestable person and investigated that possibility. A reasonable person in the circumstances of the complainant would have believed they were required to comply with the respondent members.
“I also have a reasonable basis to believe that the decision is incorrect in the application of the applicable NWPD Policy OB235. That policy and the Provincial Policing Standards with respect to the Promotion of Unbiased Policing Policy (Police Stops) mandating the NWPD Policy, clearly provides obligations with respect to psychological detention and detention based upon identity factors such as race, colour, ancestry, and other enumerated factors. The discipline authority’s analysis does not sufficiently consider the available evidence against the applicable obligations governing the respondent members’ interaction with the complainant under the relevant policies and legal authorities.”
Radheshwar, a political science instructor at Douglas College, called the police complaint process a “byzantine and Kafkaesque series of twists and turns through layers of bureaucracy, bad faith investigations, appeals, anxious interludes aimlessly spent worrying about the future of people of colour in New Westminster.”
“Who knows how many people have been dealt with unjustly,” Radheshwar said in a news release.
Radheshwar has the backing of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, which is pushing for an end to “street checks” in B.C.
“This whole debacle completely undermines the government narrative that illegal and discriminatory street checks were banned in British Columbia through policing standards made effective in 2020. Racial profiling is unfortunately alive and well in B.C. policing institutions,” said Meghan McDermott, BCCLA policy director. “It also exposes how weak police accountability is.”
