‘Humiliating’: Black uOttawa student handcuffed in campus carding incident
Ottawa Canada June 16 2019
After a black student at the University of Ottawa detailed on social media how a campus security guard grabbed him and left him handcuffed for hours on the street, the university said it immediately launched a two-pronged investigation.
Jamal Boyc privateofficer.org e tweeted Thursday about the Wednesday incident on campus, sharing a video in which campus security is heard demanding that he produce identification or leave campus after he was accused of doing a skateboarding trick while on his way to class.
“After letting them know that I didn’t have my wallet on me and trying to walk away, they followed me, hit my phone to the ground as I tried to record, grabbed me and put me in handcuffs,” he said.
“I was forced to sit on the busiest campus road in handcuffs for two hours,” he added, calling the experience “humiliating” and adding “uOttawa security used their authority to harass and demean me.”
Boyce, who did not immediately respond to a request for an interview on Friday, said via social media that he was ultimately released without charge in what he called an incident of “blatant racism” and racial profiling, adding the “silver lining” was to see “everyone who stayed and wouldn’t walk by as this injustice happened.
“We can make sure this never happens to another student by not letting the school ignore this!” he said.
Ottawa police said they were called to the campus at 4:29 p.m. Wednesday to help campus security identify someone who had been arrested for trespassing on private property and for engaging in prohibited activity on private property. The Ottawa officers continued the arrest and identified the man since they have access to databases that private security firms don’t, Const. Amy Gagnon said.
Both the Trespass to Property Act and the Liquor Licence Act have provisions that require people to identify themselves when asked, Gagnon said. The man was released unconditionally without charges and the Ottawa officers left the scene an hour later, she said
At a media conference on Friday, university president Jacques Frémont said he had asked Noël Badiou, director of the university’s human rights office, to review the situation and provide recommendations to his office about what should be done immediately and over the long term to improve the university’s policies and procedures.
“That review began immediately on Wednesday and is well underway,” Frémont told reporters.
The university has also retained an external investigator to look more clearly into whether human rights-related systemic issues exist and recommend actions if that is the finding.
The report will be made public, within the limits of privacy laws, Frémont said.
The campus must remain a safe and respectful environment, he said. “We must lead by example and make all possible efforts to call out and eliminate systemic patterns of discrimination.”
But a law professor at the university says systemic racism is rooted in the university
“A student was arrested on campus for trespassing on his own campus. How can he trespass on his own campus? For what, skateboarding while black?” law professor Amir Attaran said.
The incident prompted Attaran to publish a video he recorded of another incident that occurred in his office in September 2017 involving Attaran, a black PhD student named Brieanne Olibris and a white campus security guard.
“When I saw what happened to that student, something inside me snapped,” Attaran said Friday morning. “I had to look at it and say, ‘You know what? He’s not going to be believed and it’s going to be treated as an anomaly. I’m not willing to have that.’”
Attaran tweeted the video Thursday night after receiving permission from Olibris, who is currently studying in Australia.
According to Attaran, the guard came into his office without knocking and said security was investigating a 911 call from the office. When Attaran said he hadn’t called, the guard went into an adjacent office where Olibiris was in the midst of a comprehensive exam. Attaran started to record the interaction on his phone when he saw how upset Olibiris was getting.
The guard demands to see identification and Attaran responds that, while campus policy allows him to ask, no one is obliged to respond.
“Within moments he’d been told that the two people in the space had not called 911, so clearly there’d been some kind of misunderstanding. But he wouldn’t leave and he demanded ID. And, being very sympathetic to those who protest carding, I was not about to be a willing supplicant to it. And he became more belligerent,” Attaran said.
“I must say, my fuse for this kind of stuff is short. I’ve been exposed to it all my life. This is hardly the first time I’ve been asked at random for my ID. This has happened more times than I can count. Brieanne is a black student of mine and a very good one. I’ve graduated other black students and I hear about this all the time. This is just their reality.”
Attaran said he lodged a complaint about the incident with campus protective services at the time, but never received a response.
Wednesday’s incident was witnessed by numerous people, including PhD candidate Chris Kelly-Bisson. He said in an interview that, while “I know very well that this stuff happens,” it was still “shocking” to see it unfolding in front of you.
Baljit Nagra, an assistant professor of criminology, said she was walking home on Wednesday shortly after 4:30 when she saw a group of between 15 and students, mostly black, and four or five campus security guards gathered around Boyce in a paved area near the university centre.
Boyce was handcuffed. The students were supporting Boyce, but neither Boyce nor the students were behaving aggressively. Nagra said she identified herself as a professor and asked the security guards what was happening. “Why was this necessary over skateboarding? It made no sense,” she said. “This was an embarrassment.”
Nagra said the security guards asked her: “Are you even interested in our side of the story?” Meanwhile, a white student continued to skateboard, she said.
The police arrived soon after and put Boyce, still handcuffed, in the back of a cruiser, where he remained for between five and 10 minutes. The handcuffs were removed after Boyce exited the cruiser and he was allowed to go. Police told him to “stay out of trouble,” she said.
Nagra also has concerns about the way police handled the matter. “Why did they have to put him in the back and treat him like a criminal? I see no reason,” she said.
“The whole thing was completely appalling. They’re treating black students like they don’t belong.”
Nagra said she has reported the incident to the university’s human rights office, but had not received a response yet.
Kelly-Bisson said he saw Boyce being detained, purportedly for a skateboard trick although a white student was also skateboarding.
“Don’t let anyone tell you that Ottawa is not a racist place or that Canadian universities are safe places from racism,” Kelly-Bisson said on social media. “This happens here. It happens all the time.”
Asked whether it was legal for campus security to demand identification from people on campus, uOttawa’s president said as a lawyer he was also interested in the answer. The question is one that will be answered by the investigation, said Frémont, who was appointed chair of the Quebec Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission in 2013 and has advised international organizations on issues involving human rights, good governance and democracy.
There is a regulation on campus that permits carding that dates back to 1992, Frémont said.
According to Policy 33, which governs security and safeguarding campus property, university grounds and buildings are private property and the university reserves the right to bar any person from that property.
“Members of the Protection Services are authorized to request proof of identity from persons on campus,” says the policy.
