HALIFAX, N.S. — The violence captured in the short, grainy video horrified Dr. OmiSoore Dryden.
Dalhousie University’s James R. Johnston Chair in Black Canadian Studies watched the widely shared clip of a defiant 23-year-old mother standing her ground as three Halifax Regional Police officers bear down on her at a Walmart shopping aisle on Wednesday afternoon.
They are seemingly convinced Santina Rao is concealing merchandise and intending to shoplift. Suddenly one officer makes his move, grabbing at Rao`s arm. She pushes back, scratching his face, before being slammed to the ground and arrested.
What isn’t shown in the video are her 15-month-old son and three-year-old daughter who were with her.
“I have to tell you, if those cops were trying to rough me up like that in front of my kids I would lose my mind too,” said Dryden, who also teaches in the university's Community Health and Epidemiology department.
“This can’t be forgotten. This was a ridiculous, unnecessary, violent, racist, misogynist incident and it must be addressed.”
Racial profiling
It’s a clear-cut case of racial profiling by both Walmart employees and HRP officers, said Dryden. Each of them must be held accountable. So far HRP’s only public response to the incident - which left Rao with a concussion and broken wrist - has been through a news release, saying the violent arrest started with officers responding to a theft in progress at the Mumford Road outlet in Halifax.
That initial call to police should never have happened, said Dryden. She believes the employees involved in reporting Rao need to be held accountable.
“Their job, as far as I’m concerned, is to de-escalate and there was no reason for the police to be there,” said the professor.
“So every decision that was made by the employees, how they were trained by management, whatever the standard operating procedure at Walmart is, facilitated this woman getting her arm broken by the cops. They are all complicit in this violence.”
According to Rao, when she was first confronted by police she had only four items packed into an open compartment in her son’s stroller: a head of lettuce, two lemons, and a grapefruit. At that point, she had already paid for about $90 worth of merchandise and had a receipt to prove it. The cashier instructed her to pay for the grocery items at the checkout at the front of the store and that`s what she intended to do.
But on her way, she stopped in the toy section at the request of her daughter. That`s where she was confronted by police.
Video taken by another Walmart customer
Human rights probe
Dryden believes the incident warrants a larger investigation of the Walmart outlet conducted by the province’s human rights commission. Dryden wants to know whether the racial profiling of customers is a larger problem at the location and if management trains staff to discriminate against black customers.
She`s also calling on Walmart to give an “unreserved” public apology to Rao and her children. The apology also should be extended to the larger African Nova Scotia community.
“The company needs to outline how it intends to make amends with Ms. Rao, with those of us who shop at Walmart," said Dryden.
“They need to respond to black and indigenous communities about how they’re going to make sure this doesn’t happen again. The company needs to convince us that their employees will no longer engage in racial profiling.”
The Chronicle Herald contacted Walmart Canada’s head office in Mississauga to find out whether it’s investigating the incident. Company spokeswoman Felicia Fefer replied with an email that didn’t address the question, saying inquiries should be directed to HRP.
Dryden is calling on HRP Chief Dan Kinsella to act quickly to address the incident, especially given the force's longstanding history of racial discrimination against black Nova Scotians.
“This is an opportunity for Kinsella to stand up and say what the officers did was against policy and practice and put those cops involved in this incident on restrictive duty, and have an external body come and investigate this incident.”
SIRT'S response
The province's police watchdog, the Serious Incident Response Team (SIRT), is currently looking into the incident. But interim director Patrick Curran said on Saturday that a decision hasn't been made on whether the incident would be subject to a full investigation. He said he still has to determine whether the circumstances of Rao's case fit its criteria for an investigation.
Meanwhile, Rao said she met with two members of the SiRT investigation team on Friday, including Keith Stothart. Rao said they told her a full investigation would happen if she requested one. Rao instructed them to pursue an investigation and was told that the agency would be in touch with her early this week. During the 10-minute meeting at her home, Rao said Stothart apologized for the injuries she sustained in her arrest. The investigators wanted medical documentation that she had suffered a broken wrist and concussion, which she provided to them.
Rao was charged with resisting arrest, disturbing the peace and assaulting a police officer and her case is due in provincial court on Feb. 19. She's fighting the charges and she expects to have a lawyer next week. Rao also said she plans to take legal action against the Halifax force once her court case concludes. She’s in the process of filing a complaint against HRP and Walmart to the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission.
Martha Paynter, director of Women's Wellness Within, said Rao's treatment at the hand of HRP officers is not an isolated incident but a larger pattern of city police “endangering the public and committing acts of violence against women.”
Paynter was among a group of about 150 protesters who gathered outside the Mumford Road Walmart on Friday evening.
“The charges against Ms. Rao have to be dropped and she needs to be compensated for the harm that has been done to her and there needs to be a dramatic shift in the way police behave in this city if they are ever to regain public confidence,” said Paynter.
Accountability needed
Paynter has arranged a meeting with chief Kinsella to address the incident and she’s calling on him to show leadership by publicly addressing the Walmart incident but also police “behaviour that is not just unacceptable but completely incompatible with the protection of the public.”
The Herald submitted a request on Friday afternoon to interview Kinsella but did not receive a reply. The news release issued by the police force on Thursday said it was taking Rao's accusations of racial profiling seriously and were "looking into the matter closely.”
Wayne MacKay, a Dalhousie University law professor and human rights expert, said that all Nova Scotians have good reason to be concerned about Rao's case and are justified in demanding accountability.
MacKay said the process should start with a thorough investigation by SiRT and the province’s human rights commission.
“Both the store employees and the police need to explain why there was such a strong reaction in this case,” said MacKay. “Putting aside Ms. Rao’s adversarial behavior, it still is hard to understand why this happened except for the fact of race.”
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