For more than a decade, Sandy Hudson has been one of the most prominent voices in Canada calling for transformational change to law enforcement. She says policing can never be reformed — it must be defunded and abolished.

The co-founder of Black Lives Matter Canada and Black Legal Action Centre joined Adrian Harewood on the season one finale of Ricochet’s podcast In Bed with The Elephant. The lawyer, activist and author of her latest book, Defund: Black Lives, Policing, and Safety for All broke down the ties between policing and safety to argue in favour of police abolition to redistribute funds to community-led resources. 

“The tools of policing are just wielding violence. They are one of the only ‘legitimate’ uses of violence that our government permits,” she said.

Hudson recalls one of her earliest formative memories as a young girl. A woman in her apartment complex was in a crisis situation, “which would now likely be considered domestic violence.” Hudson remembers wondering why her neighbour didn’t just call police to come help.

“I remember going to school and getting into the elevator. There was all this running and yelling, her trying to get into the elevator to escape, and us kids becoming part of the situation,” she said. “I remember talking to people about it later and realizing this was something this woman has been dealing with for some time, and there was no hero to come and help.”

Then, a few years later, she watched as her cousin’s home was raided by Toronto Police while watching the news on TV.

“I talked to family members about what that experience was like, what the police were looking for, what they found or didn’t find, how terrorized and afraid my family members felt. It was pretty horrific,” she said.

“Those two experiences really started to turn my mind to question what is this really about and what do police really do here?”

The concept of defunding the police is not new, as Harewood points out. 

“How did we get to a place where it’s absurd to even discuss a reduction in budget, let alone a review of the entire service. Meanwhile we have teachers struggling to make ends meet,” she said.

Hudson points to television police procedurals, from Dragnet to Law and Order, with their heroic portrayals of officers and diverse casting, have historically functioned as propaganda tools for police forces.

Dragnet was even known for its collaboration with the Los Angeles Police Department, which had direct involvement in their own positive depictions, and specifically used the show to rehabilitate their public image, she said.

The myth that has been constructed is that policing leads to public safety — when actually the opposite is true.

“People have this belief that policing is attached to safety,” she said. “How does something so incorrect become ingrained in the minds of the public when they think of police?” 

The reality is that most people don’t interact with police, she said. 

According to a 2019 study, only about one third of Canadians interacted with police that year. As a result, only sugarcoated narratives about police are embedded in our collective minds, often constructed by television and movie portrayals. 

“This myth of who police are and what they do, and the people who are really harmed by that myth are Black people, Indigenous people, and other marginalized people who have to bear the brunt of what the police really do,” she said.

Last year, Mark Carney announced that the RCMP needs to hire 1,000 more personnel, and over the next four years the government will invest more than a billion dollars to increase federal policing capacity. 

This fills in the gap made by contract policing, in which RCMP officers are the police service for the general population. More than 60 per cent of RCMP resources and 70 per cent of officers have been dedicated to contract policing across the provinces (except for Ontario and Quebec), territories and various municipalities.

Hudson says gender-based violence as a key counterpoint to police abolition, but she argues that most incidents are not reported to police at all and that our system is “failing completely” at supporting people in these situations. 

Indeed, sexual assaults are vastly underreported with only six per cent of incidents being reported to police and just one in 19 results in conviction.

Hudson highlights the urgent need for more resources to help people experiencing escalating poverty and unaffordability, housing insecurity, and a lack of affordable childcare and education. None of which the police provide. 

“The services we have to provide any of those things, if at all, are underfunded, overused and strapped and require more resources,” she said.

As for defunding the police as a solution, Hudson said, “I want us to all be involved in creating a situation where we are minimizing the possibility for harm to happen to us and our community members.”

Listen to the full episode of In Bed with The Elephant on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.