Front Burner - Police crack down on protests against racism and police violence

Episode Date: June 1, 2020

This weekend, in at least 75 U.S. cities, demonstrators marched against racism and police violence in the wake of the video showing the last moments of George Floyd's life, with a Minneapolis police officer's knee on his neck. North of the border, thousands of people rallied in Toronto, some holding signs demanding "Justice for Regis." Regis Korchinski-Paquet is a black woman from Toronto whose death last week is now being investigated by Ontario's police watchdog. Today on Front Burner, we have three guests: journalist Ebyan Abdigir on the Toronto demonstration, CBC senior correspondent Susan Ormiston on the ground in Minneapolis and writer Joel Anderson on the American police response.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. In Minneapolis. Atlanta. New York.

Chicago, Miami, Washington, D.C. The list goes on. In at least 75 American cities, demonstrators demand an end to racism and police violence. And it's not just south of our border. It's here in Canada, too, where people also rallied. Black mental health matters! Some of them holding signs that read, Justice for Regis. Regis Korchinski-Paquet, a black woman from Toronto whose death last week is now being investigated

by Ontario's police watchdog. Police for police! Police for police! Today, the protests and the police reaction. I'm Pia Chattopadhyay. This is FrontBurner. We're going to cover a lot of ground today. In a little bit, I'll talk with CBC senior correspondent Susan Ormiston, who is in Minneapolis covering the protests, and Joel

Anderson of Slate on the wider police response. But we're starting today here at home with Ebian Abdigir, a journalist who has worked for the Toronto Star and the CBC, including right here on FrontBurner. Hi, Ebian. Hi, Pia. So on Saturday, you were at this rally in Toronto talking to people. It wasn't the only rally in our country, but it's the one you attended.

And a phrase that keeps coming up at that rally is justice for Regis. Justice for Regis! Justice for Regis! Regis Korchinski-Paquette died last week. She apparently fell from the 24th floor balcony of a Toronto apartment while police were in the home. What do people who are at that rally mean when they say or were holding signs that said justice for Regis? Right. So Regis Korchinski-Paquette was 29 years old and she was a black woman from Toronto. What people are saying when they are holding up these signs, Justice for Regis, they're really calling for accountability in regards to police inquests into the deaths of

Black people here in Canada. I think the sentiment that is across the board for many of the protesters is that anti-Black racism happens here in Canada too, and this isn't just an American issue. It's not just people were marching in the name of George Floyd but they were marching in the name of a black Canadian woman. Desmond Cole? All I see is that it takes black people being killed in another country for us to talk about that subject here. Because it feels safer for Canadians to talk about black racism and black death in the United States. It's very sad to me thinking that if there hadn't been unrest in

Minneapolis, the media might not even be interested in what happened to Regis. And so we don't know at this point what happened that night that she died. The provincial watchdog of police, the SIU, the Special Investigations Unit, is looking into this. But some of the details that we're hearing about are coming from a lawyer for Korchinski-Paquette's family. The lawyer's name is Nia Singh. What is the lawyer saying? So the family's lawyer says that the mother called the police because she wanted help for her daughter, Regis Korchinski-Paquette, who has epilepsy and was under distress at the time.

Regis was in distress over a family conflict, and her mother sought police assistance to bring calm to the situation. When the police arrived, Regis' mother, Claudette, her son, Reese, and Regis were waiting outside of the apartment and Regis needed to use the washroom. So she goes into the apartment and four to eight officers follow her in according to the family's lawyer. So from this point on, the family are waiting outside of the apartment and they don't know what is going on inside. After approximately one to two minutes, they don't know what is going on inside. After approximately one to two minutes, the mother and the brother heard commotion in the apartment and then heard Regis cry out, Mom help, Mom help, Mom help.

After that, mother and brother heard silence. The police exited the apartment and the mother asked one of the police officers where is Regis and the police officer returned back into the apartment and looked down and came back out and said that Regis was on the ground. So that is the account from the family that the mother called the police asking for help to bring her daughter to CAMH, the Center for Addiction and Mental Health, and she says, But I asked if they could take my daughter to CAMH and my daughter ended up dead. So I don't understand. But do they believe the police were involved outright in her death? So it's unclear what exactly the family believes at this point.

Initially, they were saying that the police were responsible for her death in a video that went viral. The police murdered my cousin. The police killed my daughter, came in my apartment and shoved her off the balcony and told CP24 not to come here, that it's a suicide. But the only people who can speak on exactly what happened are the officers involved and Regis, who has died. Once the SIU's mandate is invoked, officers involved in incidents like this are no longer allowed to speak on the matter. So, reiterating, the family did not see what happened, and the only people who did at this point can't talk about it. So what do we know at this point about Toronto Police

Service's account of what happened that day? What is it saying? So according to the SIU report, at 5.15pm police responded to what they described as a dispute call. And when they arrived, at some point upon arriving, there was an interaction between a 29-year-old woman, At this point, upon arriving, there was an interaction between a 29-year-old woman, who was later identified as Regis Korchinski-Paquette, and she had fallen from the balcony, according to this report. So the details right off the bat are quite bare and vague. And since then, on Friday, the Toronto Police Service Chief, Mark Saunders, spoke at a press conference, and he said... What happens is you'll have opportunists that will step in and fill in those blanks in those gaps. And a lot of it is misinformation. A lot of it is lies. And then because we're held back by not saying anything, it really does create a very toxic environment. And by that, he is referring to

the information that is spreading on social media, because initially, it was a video that brought this news to the surface of Regis's death. And again, we don't know at this point exactly what went down in that apartment. But those at that demonstration on Saturday were there because it echoes other situations, as far as they see what we have much more confirmation around, both here in Canada and in the United States, right? Right. People gather to protest against anti-Black racism, police brutality, but also to center that these issues are Canadian too.

For example, protesters were chanting, Black mental health matters. Black mental health matters! Black mental health matters! And I saw signs of Canadian faces too, like that of Andrew Loku. He was a 45-year-old black man who had mental health issues in July of 2015 after police arrived to his residence in Toronto. Video shows Loku with a hammer in his hand walking towards police in his apartment hallway. Seconds after he steps out of frame, he was shot to death by Constable Andrew Doyle.

He was shot and killed 21 seconds after police first encountered him. More recently in April, a black man named DeAndre Campbell died following a shooting involving Peel Police in Brampton, just outside of Toronto. His family says Campbell, who had mental health issues, was the one who had called police. The Special Investigations Unit says he was tased and shot dead. And I turned back and by the time I turned back, the officer had the gun in his hand and within seconds he shot him. So I think generally speaking, the takeaway sentiments here is a call for reform, it seems, and also for police to reimagine their de-escalation practices.

Ebion, you're part of the Black community here in Toronto and the larger Black community in Canada. And as you say, the demonstration in Toronto was in the context also of what's going on in the United States, but here at home. So Minneapolis is looming large, huh? Yeah, I'd say so. And I think what is happening in Minneapolis right now is having an effect in the rest of the world as well. And I think just looking at the images,

the overview images of how many people were there, and just the tension that is lying, you know, south of the border, it's really remarkable that it was a peaceful protest. And for myself, as both a journalist and a Black woman, it was important for me to be there to document this historic moment. This, to me, this whole experience and this whole, you know, protest that we're seeing south of the border, but also here, to me, reminds me of the Rodney King protests. I feel that it's a great travesty of justice. I feel that the jury in Simi Valley gave the okay to continue to abuse and oppress and suppress Black people in this country. And it just appears that the same issues keep occurring, keep occurring.

But this time is during a global pandemic and people still came out despite social distancing measures and despite the risk of COVID-19. Justice for Rijkaard! Justice for Rijkaard! Justice for Rijkaard! Epian, thanks. Thank you, Pia. So the weekend of demonstrations were sparked by the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, The weekend of demonstrations were sparked by the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, where a video of a police officer pinning him down with a knee on his neck went viral. That officer, Derek Chauvin, was charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter after three days of protest in the Minnesota city.

And the protests go on. CBC News correspondent Susan Ormiston is on the ground in Minneapolis. I spoke to Susan Sunday evening. Hi, Susan. Hi, Pia. I can hear what I think is choppers overhead. What's going on there? Yeah, I'm sitting very near a highway and late this afternoon a protest moved

from the state capitol, a large protest, thousands of people. The whole world is off kilter because of the action of these four men. Why should they be out free walking around? Lock them up! Lock them up! Lock them up! And they occupied the highway, walking down there for several kilometers. So the chopper is up above watching these demonstrations as these tensions continue here. And so, Susan, you've been on the ground reporting in Minneapolis for a couple of days now. You're really at the epicenter of all this. Give me a sense of the scene, the mood in that city over the weekend. Well, it's consumed by this issue.

The death of George Floyd last week has continued day after day. And I can only say what I've observed. There has been lots of violence. Friday night was bad. Thursday night, when they torched the precinct building, third precinct was worse. Thursday night when they torched the precinct building, third precinct was worse.

But authorities really lost control of it, Pia, on Friday. They actually abandoned many areas in the city which were looted and burned. And people don't like seeing their city disrupted. But they also, many people I've spoken to, have a sense that injustice has really occurred here. And they are at one with the idea of trying to change and getting justice again for race relations in this city. race relations in this city. And, you know, every morning there's a small army of citizens who come out with their brooms and shovels and clean up the mess. And I've asked lots of them.

You know, you can't like what you're seeing to your city. And they say no, but we also can't let this go without giving our attention to this issue and trying to figure out how to improve race relations in the city. We need justice for George Floyd. And if people are going to destroy things, I'll be here to help clean up. We need justice. I don't think the looting, of course the looting isn't right. I don't think the rioting and the burning is right. But this is so much more complicated than yes or no. So Susan, you said that police essentially abandoned parts of the city on Friday.

So then what happened on Saturday? What did you see on that day? Saturday was very different. Saturday night, in another area next to a police precinct, the riot police were ready. They had a plan, they acted swiftly, and as I'm sure many people saw, they came out to disperse those crowds and they weren't going to stop until that happened. So, rubber bullets, tear gas. So rubber bullets, tear gas. There was a peaceful protest of several thousand people kneeling and sitting on the ground,

but they were defying the curfew. And when the police came out, they scattered. You mentioned, you know, the change in the police approach, a more aggressive one on Saturday. And you mentioned rubber bullets. I think that tear gas was also used. And you yourself got hit, didn't you, Susan? What happened? And more importantly, are you okay? Yeah, I'm fine. You know, I mean, a lot of people don't understand, but this is a part of our responsibility, our job to be witness to what's happening. So when it kicked off and the riot police started to advance,

we were with the crowd. They were running away and we were trying to stay to watch what the police were doing, how the protesters were responding. And there was a lot of gas. They were firing canisters pretty regularly. And it's blinding and choking. We had gas masks on so we could stay in the vicinity.

The police line was a typical riot police line. You know, shoulders locked, moving in a strong line of over 100 officers moving up the street. And they had moved up so that they were within our vision. But all the protesters had gone further ahead we couldn't see them anymore they stopped we stopped we were about maybe 30 meters away in a parking lot and for several minutes watched them they watched us and then they fired on us i just would rather be hooked up that That's what I'm telling us. Let's go. They fired some gas towards us. The canister hit me in the rear end, actually.

And they fired a rubber billet. Oh! Right in the arm. Yeah, I'm okay. So that was the message. Move out of here. Don't care who you are. You've got to be out of this area.

And so it was prudent for us then to back off and go around to find where the protesters had been waiting. Don't run your face. It's getting better now. It's getting better. Thank you. They hit me with the magnesium earlier. Susan, just before I let you go, you have covered all kinds of conflict in all parts of the world, many demonstrations, the Middle East, Asia, Eastern Europe, and now in the United States where you are based. Put this, what you're seeing into that context. It looks very, very intense and difficult on the television or on social media, but give me the context of this for you. social media, but give me the context of this for you. Yeah, Pia, you know, I have barely had time to process this and think intelligently about all this. But what I sense is this is a real

cauldron, timing-wise as well. I mean, here you have everyone locked down for the last three to four months with coronavirus. People definitely have lost their jobs here like everywhere in the world. You've got an election coming in less than six months. You have the president of this country in some people's minds really adding fuel to this fire earlier in the week calling the demonstrators thugs and several times telling the mayor of this city in the middle of the chaos that he's weak and can't control his city. You have all these elements at play, and then the primary thing here is this decades-old, deep, painful conflict of racism in this country. And, you know, the nature of that video that almost everyone I've spoken to has seen is so painful.

It's so blatant that this, it's no wonder really this has kicked off. I spoke to a man at the demonstration at the state capitol this afternoon, and he said, we warn the city, we warn them after other incidents where black men had been killed by white police officers that there was going to be an incident like this. We've been doing this for the last five years, peacefully marching, demonstrations, peacefully. We've been telling the city and the authorities they had to change the makeup of the police department and the general politics of race in this city, and they didn't listen, and he said this was bound to happen.

You cannot continue to oppress, beat down, marginalize, redline, and kill a people and think we ain't going to stand up and eventually fight back. This is an uprising. I'm not with all of the looting, but damn it, I understand it. So of course, you know, I don't need to tell anybody this country has suffered through so many bouts of tense incidents like this. I've been at a couple, Ferguson was one. incidents like this. I've been at a couple. Ferguson was one. It's as deep and as difficult, but I think this layer of all these uncertainties right now has just made it a cauldron of trouble. And I don't think anybody can reliably predict at this moment where it's going to go, whether the tensions will diminish or whether something new will kick it off

and this will be an even more difficult situation. But, you know, I've been moved, I guess I'll say, by the resolve of many citizens, black and white, that I've observed over the last few days, they are really committed to change. There was a young woman in tears today talking to me at the demonstration, a white woman saying, I can't believe in my generation that we're still having to deal with this. It's super unfair that people can't just be who they are. Nobody should be murdered just by the color of their own skin. That's insanity. There was another guy who said

he was cleaning up an office depot store that was looted and set ablaze and he was in there mopping up the sprinkler water. He's a young black man and he said, yeah, people are destroying property, but people are also coming out to fix it. And now it's up to the higher-ups to fix the problem. There's a reason. And hopefully people are listening and people are watching and people are going to pay attention now.

The people are fixing it themselves here. Now the people up top need to fix the root of the issue. Susan, thank you. And please take care of yourself. Okay, Pia, thank you. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. As we've mentioned, and as you've probably seen on social media,

the protests have not been limited to Minneapolis. They've been all across the United States, and in many places, the police response has been severe. I'm joined now by Joel Anderson, who just wrote a piece for Slate about that response. His piece is called The Police Don't Change. Hi, Joel. Thanks for having me, Tia. So as you looked out across your country this weekend, the protests in cities from coast to coast, what did you see? Well, I saw a lot of anger.

You know, people were clearly disturbed, upset, and ready to take to the streets after, you know, the viral video of George Floyd's arrest make the rounds. And it's just hard to, you know, see it as anything other than that as an expression of, you know, sincere, deep anger, grief. People that were disturbed at seeing that on camera and got taken to the streets to say, hey, this has got to stop one way or another. What did you see in terms of the police response? Well, so I covered protests in 2014-15, so that's Ferguson. It wasn't until the police started asking the crowd to move 20 feet back that things started to get escalated. Baltimore. Protesters overwhelming patrol cars, shattering windshields, setting cars on fire, left burning in the streets. Here are the places that not only and back then what we saw were police officers, you know,

in all this like military, you know, there's like a lot of military theater coming out, ride gear, come got the tanks and, you know, setting perimeters and everything else and just kind of really setting themselves apart from protesters and really a confrontational pose. And so you think, oh, wow, well, those days should be over. People should have known that that is an ineffective way of policing and monitoring protests. They've come up with some different tactics in the time since then. But no, I saw basically the same things that we saw in Ferguson and Baltimore, where, you know, the police were aggressive,

agitating the crowd, just generally doing the sort of things that we thought that they had learned to not do five or six years ago. As you say, these protests were, of course, sparked by the killing of George Floyd. They are about police brutality. So take me through some of the responses to these protests you have seen from police over the weekend. me through some of the responses to these protests you have seen from police over the weekend. Well, yeah, I mean, obviously, it's hard to not think to start in New York, you know, a nation's largest city, where, you know, you saw, you know, police officers driving through crowds of protesters in their vehicles. You know, and there's just a number of videos just showing police officers needlessly getting physical with protesters, pushing a woman down so hard that she had a seizure later. I was an aggressive towards the police officer. Even if I was, he should have had the self-restraint to not hurt the people he's supposed to be protecting.

had the self-restraint to not hurt the people he's supposed to be protecting. There was a journalist where her eye, she literally lost her eyesight because she was shot in the eye by a rubber bullet. Even in Seattle, the west coast of this country, their police chief is a black woman, thought of as fairly progressive, had said all the right things in the wake of Floyd's death, right? George Floyd's death. Chief Carmen Best released an open statement to the officers of Floyd's death, right? George Floyd's death. Chief Carmen Best released an open statement to the officers of her department tonight. She referred to the death of George Floyd as a, quote, tragic murder

by the Minneapolis Police Department. The statement goes on to say, I have confidence that something like this would not occur in our city. And then we catch on video two of our officers beating up a protester. You know, they've got a protester thrown on the

ground and throwing punches at him. So it was just that sort of stuff. I mean, there were so many videos like that, that it was basically hard to keep up with. Yeah, one of our own, well, Susan Ormiston, who I was just talking to, our reporter on the ground was hit with a rubber bullet. And it wasn't just journalists, It was people being hit by rubber bullets, fired by police. We saw people getting tear gassed in certain cities. There were flashbangs. How does that kind of aggressive response by police in various American cities these last couple days match up with what we've been hearing from police leadership over the last week? Well, yeah, sure. So for instance, right there in Minneapolis,

you know, the police chief who had earned a lot of praise for firing the four officers involved in Floyd's killing, and he said the right thing, you know, saying that there was a deficit of hope in the city. And as I wear this uniform before you, I know that this department has contributed to that deficit of hope, but I will not allow to continue to increase that deficit by re-traumatizing those folks in our community. But if you look on Saturday and you look at the response to the people in the streets, I mean, we have people that were reporting, hey, police officers, state troopers were just indiscriminately firing tear gas at people in Pepper Spray. And I mean, this is in the middle

of a global pandemic as well. Like it's a public safety matter in another way, a public health safety matter when you're shooting that sort of stuff at people in the middle of a pandemic, right? So that was one example. In Houston, you know, their police chief, Art Acevedo, who is well-known, progressive circles for being sort of this really big reformer and saying really good things about what policing does wrong and what it could do better.

some of the reports that came out of there that police officers, his police officers were going after people, agitating protesters, you know, turning nonviolent protest violent, essentially. And so it's just really difficult for their words to hold up. I mean, they can say these things, but until we see them reflected in the behavior of the officers, it's really tough to believe that any of that matters. So whether we look at Atlanta or many other places, curfews were put in place. People defied the curfew. Go inside now! Get in the hole! The police almost everywhere were also met with things being thrown at them, rocks in some cases, property being destroyed. And again, of course, this is not everyone who's out on the street,

but that is part of the mix that's out there. So how do you think, Joel, police could have better responded? If not the way they're doing it, then what? Well, I mean, I think there's one of two things, right? I think either they don't respond, that they're not out there, because their presence alone is an adjutant. You know what I mean? People, and having covered some of these protests before, police show up, and then all of a sudden tensions rise.

So I've seen it enough times to know that sometimes the police aren't there in the first place, that people don't have anything to respond to. Or there's also, you know, and I believe this was in Flint, Michigan, where I saw the police chief, you know, told his officers to stand down. And he went out there and joined the protesters. And they welcomed them into their crowd, right? And that's another way. We want to be with you all for real.

So I took my helmet off and laid the batons down. I want to make this a parade, not a protest. But the way that they've done it city to city, for the most part, going out there in military gear and bringing tanks out and coming out in riot gear, that clearly has proven to be ineffective in tamping down the tensions and the anger in the crowd. So at a minimum, they could not bring out riot gear. They could leave the tanks at home and see how it goes from there. bring out riot gear, they could leave the tanks at home and see how it goes from there. As a journalist, and also as a black man, because both are integral parts of who you are, Joel, it is hard for any of us to know what, you know, the new day, so to speak, will bring.

But what do you hope is going to come from all of this? peace and for police departments to consider the idea that it would be useful to root out discriminatory and racist practices, that people's patience with police is short now. And hopefully they see that and they go about reforming their behavior. And also, I hope that people, you know, city council members, mayors across the country seriously think about the way in which police departments are funded. And police departments basically are their own planet within cities and budgets. I mean, when cities and other municipalities cut budgets, they very rarely do that to police departments. They're sort of impervious to all that stuff. And I just, you know, you wonder if maybe these people think about, hey, you know, maybe we should attempt to treat them as city employees like they are. You know, it'd be worth thinking about, you know, maybe putting in some restraints or putting in more guidance of these police departments and law enforcement agencies rather than just sort of letting them operate on their own.

Before I let you go, how are you doing? And I ask that not just in a sort of flippant how are you doing kind of way, but we know and people keep explaining how difficult this is for Black Americans and Black Canadians and how different it is for someone like you than many other of your colleagues who are journalists who are white? Well, you know, I'm personally fine, but more broadly, I'm really sad and I'm afraid. I mean, we're truly living in unprecedented times. And, you know, I see people out in the street.

I see the anger and I see, you know, the desperation. And, you know, I feel that. You know, I mean, like you said, I'm a black man in America. You know, I've been stopped by police a number of times in my life. And it's really difficult. You can understand why people are sort of fed up. And you just hope that at the end of this, that something positive comes of it. And I'm just really worried that it won't.

You know, I thought covering Ferguson and Baltimore, that there was going to be a sea change and that people were really going to go about reforming police. and discriminatory policing, that people would be much more open to the idea that, you know, systemic racism is a problem and that we need to attempt about chipping away at that, right? And it didn't happen. And so we're back at the same place again, in a place where it's actually more dangerous now. We're really, you know, the idea that people gathered by tens of thousands in the middle of a pandemic, you know, it's really severe risk to themselves. They could really get sick.

They could really get something out there and bring it home. And they're out there because they're so upset and they're so, you know, mad about what's going on right now. And that tells you, you know, the extent of how bad things are here right now. And I'm just like, well, man, where is this going to go? So, yeah, that's a long-winded way of saying I'm very truly worried about the direction of our country, especially as we're in the middle of an election year, too. So many people hope and pray and are on the streets hoping that this leads to real change and not the same sort of ending to all these protests

as Ferguson, as you say. Joel, thanks a lot. Be safe and take good care of yourself, okay? Hey, thanks so much for having me on today. Thanks so much. Before we go today, I wanted to mention another demonstration that took place on Sunday evening. Thousands rallied outside police headquarters in Montreal to protest the death of George Floyd, racism and police violence here in Canada. Around 8 p.m., police declared the protest illegal and started throwing canisters of tear gas. This is a story we're going to keep following. That's all for today. I'm Pia Chattopadhyay. Thank you so much for listening to FrontBurner. We'll talk again tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.