My name is Richard Gbotu Kubele, and I am a social worker. I am also a mediator, specifically an intercultural mediator. Very often, when there were issues between the police and immigrant communities, police officials—particularly those in community policing—would contact me to ask for advice, for help, or for guidance. So, one thing led to another, and during a discussion with one of the officials from the Sherbrooke Police Department—specifically the division responsible for community relations—he brought up the issue with me, noting that there was a lack of training. The Sherbrooke police had not been trained in intercultural approaches. They had not been trained on immigrant populations who had just arrived in the city.
For the record, for a certain period, Sherbrooke was a city that welcomed a large number of immigrants across all categories—though a few decades ago, the majority were refugees from war-torn countries who were resettled in Sherbrooke. So, among these people, there were some who had left their home countries and lived in other countries, but in refugee camps. Some had been there for several years; others had even been born in refugee camps. In their home countries, seeing a police officer or a soldier was not a source of trust or something that guaranteed safety. On the contrary, when they saw a man with a gun or in uniform, the young people were wary; they had to run away, they had to protect themselves. On the one hand, these people themselves weren’t trained to integrate into the local culture, and unfortunately, the police weren’t trained to understand the dynamics of these people who had just arrived.
With the Sherbrooke Community Police, we organized a training session. It was a one-time session that lasted at least a morning. Part of it was a presentation, there were practical exercises, and then there were informal discussions and Q&A games. Unfortunately, what happened was that the need for the Sherbrooke police leadership at that time was to expand the initiative to all police divisions. But unfortunately, there was no budget for those training sessions. And that was really a barrier to expanding the initiative to the other divisions of the Sherbrooke police.
My name is Emmanuel Diwafila, and I’ve been a police officer since 2006. My career path has been a bit unconventional. I didn’t follow a traditional path. I finished high school outside of Canada at a private school. After that, I came here and took courses in computer science. I spent two years at Cité Collégiale studying police services technology. I applied two or three times to the RCMP and other police forces, and Ottawa called me back in 2005. A year later, I was hired by the Ottawa Police Service. They sent me to their training academy. During those six weeks of training, there was physical training, and we covered everything related to the law, traffic regulations, and criminal law. As far as I can recall, I don’t remember anything being discussed about race or minorities. We talked about drugs back then, but there wasn’t really anything about minorities. After about three months, the police had training sessions where we’d go to a college, and there were different lessons on how to give a briefing, how to write certain reports, and sometimes there were guest speakers who came—and these speakers here in Ottawa would bring up topics like respect in the workplace. We talked about the whole trans and LGBTQ reality, and on top of that, we added racial profiling. But these weren’t in-depth courses; they were really just scratching the surface. I remember one time, I was in an office when an officer walked in and said, “You know, we have a lot of challenges with Black officers because Black people are less intelligent than white people.” And he came in with a book, because there are still books—even at the university—that have been published—scientific works, but ones published back when racism was rampant and was practically the only voice. So that explains why that mindset still exists. But then imagine, you’re working with someone who holds that as their voice, as their philosophy, and who speaks out. It’s not just arrogant; it’s already disturbing, and no matter what training you receive internally, an ecosystem has already been created—an atmosphere has been established. It wasn’t created by people who lived through it. We needed something more practical. What is that? What is a traffic ticket? How does a traffic ticket affect the average person? How does someone who gets pulled over 5 or 6 times in the same week in the neighborhood just for having a nice car—how does that person experience that? What is their perspective? What are the effects and consequences of that? You’re just scratching the surface of what’s really going on, but that’s all there was to it. There really wasn’t more to it than that. Then there are policies that were put in place, like in Ottawa—policies to track which officers pulled over which cars and all that. Those policies were actually quite progressive for a while. I think they’re still in place, but on the other hand, this is still happening today.
Speaking of the Luamba case, I like the decision because it’s a step forward. However, the nuance that it wasn’t intentional bothers me. Personally, I think it’s very deliberate, and I believe that at the core of training—especially in an environment where there aren’t many police officers from minority backgrounds—there’s a need to educate and train, but we also need to contextualize and humanize the people we arrest.
So, if I had to give advice to future police officers, I’d say they must always remember that Canada is a cultural mosaic. A police officer plays a noble role. They uphold public safety on the ground. At the same time, a police officer is an agent of social cohesion and integration. They must understand that a person’s social background does not define them, and that if race must be considered, they must remember that the only race that matters is the human race.
