Winnipeg Copwatch

Yesterday, police in Montreal arrested 258 people at the International Day Against Police Brutality, roughly half of the participants. In Toronto, a police officer was spotted on a rooftop with a sniper rifle (pictured) near a demonstration organized by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty and others. Halifax and Ottawa’s marches appear to have taken place [...]

Deconstructing Police Power, Imagining Alternatives In Winnipeg, Manitoba from July 22 to 24, 2011. Keynote speakers are: Andrea Ritchie, author of Queer (In)Justice Kristian Williams, author of Our Enemies in Blue An example of the panels and workshops planned are: Policing in the context of Colonialism Race, Class, Gender, Sexuality and the Law Gangs and [...]

Today, on the International Day Against Police Brutality… RCMP in northern Manitoba shot and killed a man in God’s Lake Narrows. The Winnipeg Free Press story says The man shot dead by the RCMP is being identified as Paul Duck, a respected member of the community who was reportedly firing his gun in an attempt [...]

We often get requests for links to our “rights cards”, which have information about encounters with police, and aren’t always easy to find on our website, so here are the links, for those who are interested. Rights card on interacting with police when taking footage or photographs Rights card with information on being arrested or [...]

Winnipeg Copwatch is involved in a coalition that is planning three events in March to mark the International Day Against Police Brutality. Please pass on the info, come out to the events, and get in touch if you’d like to volunteer or have any questions! – 1. Panel Discussion: A Critical Eye on Policing in [...]

Good Boy is a new music video by Wab Kinew featuring Lorenzo and Troy Westwood in memory of 18-year-old Matthew Dumas, who was killed by a Winnipeg police officer on January 31, 2005.

Winnipeg Police Service Constables Peter O’Kane and Jess Zebrun, who had been charged with perjury for lying to a judge to get a search warrant, had their charges dismissed yesterday on a technicality. During the trial, prosecutor Robert Tapper forgot to have any of the witnesses identify the two police officers in the courtroom. The [...]

Last April, police confiscated the cellphone that Marlon Kautz, a member of Copwatch of East Atlanta, had been using to record them. When Kautz got the phone back, some of the footage had been deleted. He says police weren’t doing anything improper in the arrest they were carrying out. The confiscation of the camera was [...]

Ajamu Nangwaya has compiled a fact sheet with information about 35 cases of police violence against African-Canadians. One is from 1952, and the rest are since 1978. On August 10, 1993, 37-year-old Audrey Smith, a tourist, public sector worker and mother of five from Jamaica, was strip-searched “naked as the day I was born, on [...]

Despite the gross over-representation of crime stories in the news media and the constant push from the Conservatives for ‘tough on crime’ policies, Canadians still prefer a rational approach to reducing crime. According to a recent Environics Institute survey, 58% of Canadians prefer preventive strategies toward crime reduction, compared to 36% that prefer harsh punishments. [...]