The impacts of police and policing

The Attorney General must take immediate action to increase access to justice for people who believe they have been the victims of excessive force, discrimination, or harassment by police by:

Recommendation 3: Amending the Police Act to expand the mandate of the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner (OPCC) in order to:

1. ensure that all police officers and forces operating in BC fall under the mandate of the OPCC;
2. ensure that civilian investigators and civilian staff members are responsible for the entirety of the complaint resolution process; and
3. allow the OPCC to audit police complaints each year, particularly where they involve discrimination based on race, gender, poverty, or health status, and publicly report on areas of concern for further investigation or reform.

Service gaps and barriers

Recommendation 24: The Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions and the Ministry of Health must improve the ability of BC hospitals to meet the needs of people living with the effects of substance use, mental illness, and/or homelessness by:

• auditing experiences in hospitals, beginning with an analysis of people’s experiences where they have been turned away from emergency rooms or discharged and where there have been negative health consequences;
• working with people with lived experience to audit provincial standards for effectively managing substance withdrawal in hospital settings;
• ensuring that all hospitals offer supervised consumption services to patients; and
• working with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing to create transitional housing options to ensuring that sick and injured people are not released from the hospital to the streets or to emergency shelter.

Operationalizing stigma-auditing

Recommendation 34: In its first year in operation, the BC Human Rights Commission should prioritize stigma-auditing areas of law and policy that most directly impact highly stigmatized populations, including, but not limited to:

• public space governance;
income assistance and disability policy;
• housing policy and residential tenancy law;
• child welfare law and policy;
• policing law and policy;
• health policy related to mental health and substance use; and
• privacy law as it relates to people who live in public space and people who are criminalized as a result of substance use.