Ep.59 - Canadian Police Are Racist Too

Abdirahman Abdi, a Somali man in Ottawa, is dead after witnesses say he was beaten by cops.   There’s been a lot of attention on police violence against Black people in the U.S. lately. But Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Toronto, says Canada’s policing style has a lot of the same problems as the American system when it comes to dealing with racialized and Indigenous populations. Read Akwasi's piece in the Globe and Mail: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/a-hard-truth-canadas-policing-style-is-very-similar-to-the-us/article30942053/   Karmen James Omeasoo, a rapper who performs under the name Hellnback, talks about some of the troubles Indigenous men face with the Winnipeg police and the RCMP.     Christien Levien, a criminal lawyer at Wiley and Levien, talks about how his own bad experience with police as a teenager led him to creating the app LegalSwipe to help other racialized kids stand up to cops.   The song sampled in the show is Hellnback’s “Caught Up,” produced by Stomp. Support COMMONS: http://commonspodcast.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.