Canadian Police Violence Data
Notes on Terminology
Police Killing: A death directly resulting from police use of force. Including but not limited to: shooting, tazing, other use of force.
Police-Involved Deaths Any civilian death at the hands of police or in the custody of police. Includes police killings, and deaths resulting from police negligence/inaction: suicide, overdoses, medical emergencies, etc. This is broader term that is more difficult to refute on the grounds of semantics.
A dataset covering January 2000 to December 2020 was collected by the CBC.
- “There is no government database listing deaths at the hands of the police available to the public in Canada, so CBC News created its own. The CBC’s research librarians have collected detailed information on each case, such as ethnicity, the role of mental illness or substance abuse, the type of weapon used and the police service involved, to create a picture of who is dying in police encounters.”
This is not an official/complete count, police in Canada are not mandated to collect/publish data regarding deaths. This dataset is a collection of second-hand information: press releases, news articles, etc. Most records are incomplete. Many more are missing (eg. “starlight tour” deaths). Further the data is not updated regularly, it was first published in 2018 but was not updated again until summer 2020.
A more up to date record is available on killercopscanada, a WordPress blog run by an anonymous user that was started in July 2015. This blog contains 600+ posts pertaining to at least 400+ incidents, 200+ are missing from the CBC dataset. We have combined these data sets into one, more comprehensive database.
Police involved deaths by year in Canada
2020 was a record-breaking year, with at least 74 police involved deaths.
Age of the victims
Histograms show the shape and spread of a dataset. Here we see the age distribution of victims in 5-year increments. The histogram shows us that the age is slightly skewed towards older ages.
What type of weapon (if any) did the victim have?
Over 45% of victims were unarmed. Note Being Armed is does not justify any individual police killing. However, in aggregate a higher number of unarmed victims can indicate a predisposition towards excessive use of force.
Which police departments are responsible for the most deaths?
There are over 100 departments in the dataset, of which the 17 below are responsible for 73% of all the deaths.
| Rank | Department | Province | Deaths |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | RCMP | BC | 108 |
| 2 | Toronto Police Service | ON | 71 |
| 3 | Ontario Provincial Police | ON | 52 |
| 4 | RCMP | AB | 50 |
| 5 | Sûreté du Québec | QC | 47 |
| 6 | Edmonton Police Service | AB | 43 |
| 7 | Service de police de la Ville de Montreal | QC | 32 |
| 8 | Winnipeg Police Service | MB | 31 |
| 9 | Calgary Police Service | AB | 31 |
| 10 | Vancouver Police Department | BC | 27 |
| 11 | Peel Regional Police | ON | 21 |
| 12 | RCMP | SK | 16 |
| 13 | Ottawa Police Service | ON | 16 |
| 14 | York Regional Police | ON | 12 |
| 15 | RCMP | NU | 10 |
| 16 | London Police Service | ON | 10 |
| 17 | Hamilton Police Service | ON | 10 |
The racial breakdown of victims.
You might hear someone say: “The majority of people killed by police in Canada are White”. This statement might not be false … but it is also very misleading.
Poll Questions:
3) What should we do to get a more accurate picture of the racial breakdown of police involved deaths?
A) Display the data alongside the proportion of Canada's total population that
each racial group comprises
B) Divide by the total number of deaths to get a percentage
C) Subtract the Unknown category and then divide by the total number of deaths
to get a percentage
D) Divide the total deaths of each racial group by the total population of each racial
group