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ਸ. ਅਮਰੀਕ ਸਿੰਘ ਆਹਲੂਵਾਲੀਆ ਨੂੰ ਪੀਲ ਪੁਲਿਸ ਸਰਵਿਸਸ ਬੋਰਡ ਦਾ ਚੇਅਰ ਬਣਾਇਆ ਗਿਆ
Newly elected Peel police board chair sets a fresh tone

Amrik Singh Ahluwalia wasted no time charting a new direction for the force on Friday, renewing the fight against street checks.

It doesn’t affect brown people and white people — it affects black males.” With that sharp rebuke of a report on police street checks — insisting that it missed the essence of the controversy — the man now heading the oversight of Peel Region police made clear that change is coming.

Minutes after Amrik Singh Ahluwalia stood Friday morning and moved to his new seat following his unanimous election as chair of the Peel Police Services Board, he joined other members calling for change within the country’s third-largest municipal police force.

The first issue: frustration with a consultant’s report commissioned by police chief Jennifer Evans.

“It was offensive,” said Brampton Mayor Linda Jeffrey, who just moments earlier had nominated Ahluwalia for the job as chair. “It was supporting the status quo,” Jeffrey said of the report, put together and presented by Louise Doucet and Liz Torlee, joint managing directors of TerraNova, a strategic marketing company.

Ahluwalia’s leadership could spell trouble for Evans if she continues to challenge the board on the controversial issue of police street checks, known as carding in Toronto. Unlike the outgoing chair, Laurie Williamson, who sided with Evans on the issue, Ahluwalia says the practice is harmful and has to stop.

“It disproportionately effects one segment of the society,” Ahluwalia told the Star after the meeting. “Three-and-a-half times the probability of stopping black men — it effects them significantly.”
In September, the Star published six years of street check data, obtained from the force under freedom of information laws, that showed black individuals were three times as likely to be stopped by Peel police as whites.

The next day, Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie, Jeffrey, Ahluwalia and Norma Nicholson won a 4-3 vote to stop street checks, requesting that Evans take immediate action. She refused, claiming they did not have authority over her on operational matters. Anti-carding advocates, including the Law Union of Ontario, have refuted this claim. In October the provincial government announced it will ban the practice of random street checks.

Sophia Brown Ramsay, programming director for the Black Community Action Network of Peel, attended Friday’s meeting and is thrilled to have a new chair who supports her group’s goal to end street checks.

“Oh my goodness, it is exactly what we have been pulling for. We have spoken to the board in the past. What I love about what our new chair said is we have to work collectively. It’s extremely encouraging to have someone from the South Asian community have that gusto, to say he wants to work with us.”

That kind of collaboration between Peel’s large visible minority groups would help overcome a lack of understanding, Ramsay said.

After the report commissioned by Evans was presented, board member Nicholson voiced concerns about that lack of understanding, evidenced by its descriptions of three public street check consultation sessions in the fall.

She singled out one passage in the report that states, “very few young people” with “first-hand experience with street checks attended.” It then states that “many of those who did admitted to the facilitators (TerraNova) that they had been ‘called up’ for support by staunch opponents.” The report states that “several” of these young people, “were promised pizza in return for sharing their negative street check experiences.”

Nicholson called the passage, “embarrassing”. She told the TerraNova directors not to “judge” the youth who did take the time to attend the sessions and share their experiences. She asked Evans to remove the section about youth being coerced for pizza before the report is formally made public.

The description did not match the Star’s observation of the one session it attended, when numerous young black men, as well as some in their 30s and 40s, spoke emotionally about their own experiences with carding.

Ahluwalia told the presenters the same. “There were a lot of comments that were made that I think have been missed.”

Jeffrey told Evans and the report’s presenters that it did not square with much of what she heard at the public consultations. She mentioned a teacher with two young kids who told the mayor he had been stopped for street checks three times, in front of them and even in front of his colleagues. “What was his crime? He was black.”

“He asked, ‘how do I teach my children to have respect for the police?’, when he was being regularly stopped.”

Evans said the report and the comments made by board members Friday would be a “topic of discussion again with my command team. There is a lot of work to be done,” she said, adding that there is a need, “to build trust.”

“Not just in Peel, but policing in general is coming under scrutiny.”


ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕਾ ਖ਼ਾਲਸਾ, ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕੀ ਫ਼ਤਹਿ॥
ਖ਼ਾਲਸਾ ਨਿਊਜ਼ ਸਿਰਫ ਸ੍ਰੀ ਗੁਰੂ ਗ੍ਰੰਥ ਸਾਹਿਬ ਨੂੰ ਸਮਰਪਿਤ ਹੈ। ਅਸੀਂ ਅਖੌਤੀ ਦਸਮ ਗ੍ਰੰਥ ਅਤੇ ਹੋਰ ਅਨਮਤੀ ਗ੍ਰੰਥ, ਪੱਪੂ (ਅਖੌਤੀ ਜਥੇਦਾਰ), ਪਖੰਡੀ ਸਾਧ, ਸੰਤ, ਬਾਬੇ, ਅਨਮਤੀ ਕਰਮਕਾਂਡਾਂ ਦੇ ਖਿਲਾਫ ਪ੍ਰਚਾਰ ਕਰਦੇ ਰਹੇ ਹਾਂ ਅਤੇ ਕਰਦੇ ਰਹਾਂਗੇ।
ਅਸੀਂ ਹਰ ਉਸ ਸਿੱਖ / ਸਿੱਖ ਜਥੇਬੰਦੀ ਦਾ ਸਾਥ ਦੇਵਾਂਗੇ, ਜਿਸਦਾ ਨਿਸ਼ਚਾ ਸਿਰਫ ਸ੍ਰੀ ਗੁਰੂ ਗ੍ਰੰਥ ਸਾਹਿਬ 'ਤੇ ਹੋਵੇ, ਸੱਚ ਬੋਲਣ ਅਤੇ ਸੱਚ 'ਤੇ ਪਹਿਰਾ ਦੇਣ ਦੀ ਹਿੰਮਤ ਅਤੇ ਬਾਬਰ ਦੇ ਸਾਹਮਣੇ ਖਲੋ ਕੇ ਜਾਬਰ ਕਹਿਣ ਦੀ ਹਿੰਮਤ ਰੱਖਦਾ ਹੋਵੇ।



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