Project tracking police-involved deaths in Canada receives grant to continue research

A project tracking police-involved deaths in Canada will continue its research after receiving a nearly quarter-million dollar grant from the federal Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

The project, called Tracking (In)Justice, is the only publicly available database in Canada recording deaths that occur during police interactions where force is used. 

Alexander McClelland, a criminology professor at Carleton University and the initiative’s lead investigator, has been tracking police-involved deaths since 2021 alongside his colleagues.

According to Tracking (In)Justice data, Canada averages around 50 police-involved deaths per year. The data shows recent years have been above average, with a record 62 police-involved deaths in 2022.

Before the project began, McClelland said it was difficult to answer any questions on police-involved deaths in Canada, including how many were occurring.

“We started this project because people were fed up,” McClelland said. “There were so many police-involved deaths occurring, but at the same time, we couldn’t say how many, because there was no official source.

“Governments aren’t releasing this information to the public. Police forces, in some instances, aren’t even collecting this information.”

McClelland said he plans to use the $228,205 SSHRC grant to document the experiences of affected families and share them through Tracking (In)Justice’s website. 

Additionally, the grant will help create a “hotspot map,” McClelland said. The map will be regularly updated and visually display police-involved deaths across Canada.

Tracking (In)Justice builds off an earlier CBC project called Deadly Force. It featured a detailed set of data on police-involved deaths from 2000 to 2020, which Tracking (In)Justice incorporated into its own database. 

McClelland said it has been challenging for his researchers to gather further information about police-involved deaths, including the building of complete profiles of victims.

Andy Crosby, a co-investigator for Tracking (In)Justice, said the anonymous and vague data has resulted in a lot of “unknowns” in their database. Often, the reports they receive lack information including the individual’s name, race and other elements, he added.

“We may get a very limited press release from a police service or from an oversight body, like the [the Special Investigations Unit (SIU)] … and that may be all we have to work with,” Crosby said. 

While Tracking (In)Justice has increased transparency around police-involved deaths in Canada, Crosby said police forces and governments need to be more forthcoming with the public, particularly with families of victims of police violence.

“We often see little to no avenues for justice for the families of loved ones who die with interactions with police,” Crosby said.

Karyn Greenwood-Graham, founder of Affected Families of Police Homicide (AFPH), said she has seen and heard firsthand how the SIU has failed to conduct rigorous investigations into police-involved deaths. 

“Lots of our families have proven that there was no thorough investigation done,” Greenwood-Graham said. “They didn’t speak to witnesses.”

Greenwood-Graham founded AFPH after her son, Trevor Graham, was fatally shot by police in November 2007. 

According to a 2013 article in the Toronto Star, a Waterloo Regional Police Service officer fatally shot Graham after he disobeyed orders to drop a knife after trying to rob a drugstore for painkillers. Graham had been struggling with addiction and serious mental health problems. 

After her son’s death, Greenwood-Graham began reaching out to other families who had gone through similar events. Now, AFPH is a council of more than 100 families. 

The organization has worked with police, the attorney general and the former Ontario government under Kathleen Wynne to try and improve policing and SIU investigations in Canada.

In a Jan. 15 email statement to the Charlatan, SIU spokesperson Monica Hudon said investigators seek out witnesses by canvassing neighbourhoods, appealing for witnesses through media, distributing flyers and interviewing involved police officers. 

“SIU investigators make every effort to locate and interview all civilians who may have information about a case,” the statement read. “Interviewing as many people as possible helps investigators better understand what transpired.”

Greenwood-Graham attributed the failures of the oversight body to a persistent “police culture” within the SIU. 

“Most of the investigators are ex-police. Their defence is that they don’t feel that there’s going to be anybody else that can do as thorough an investigation as people that are police,” Greenwood-Graham said.

Of the 16 lead investigators employed by the oversight body, 10 have never worked as police officers in Ontario, according to the SIU’s statement. 

“In the event that a former police officer is assigned to a case, they cannot be assigned to a case involving a police service they had once worked for,” reads the statement. “In addition, the SIU Director can never have been a police officer.”

AFPH has begun collaborating with Tracking (In)Justice by informing their project through lived experience. Greenwood-Graham said she was “thrilled” when she learned about the project’s mission. 

“They do support us, and we have supported them,” she said.

Greenwood-Graham also said she wants the project to push for more complete information on victims of police-involved deaths.

“Were they [Indigenous]? Were they Black? These are the things that we need to know, unfortunately. 

“Police don’t want us to know because they don’t want us to have that information.”

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Featured graphic by Alisha Velji.