A Canadian woman has been awarded compensation equivalent to over 15,000 euros due to discrimination during a traffic stop. The human rights tribunal of the province of British Columbia ruled that the contact with the police in Vancouver involved "an impairment of her dignity, feelings, and self-respect".
Safiya Elshazly, a Black woman, was sitting on a Tuesday evening in December 2020 with three others in the back seat of a car when the police stopped the vehicle. When an officer asked her for identification because he wanted to issue a fine for not wearing a seatbelt, she said she did not have it with her.
The officer then arrested her for obstruction and handcuffed her outside the car with her arms behind her back. In her complaint, Elshazly pointed out that the officer treated her differently than the white driver. He also did not have identification on him, but according to her was "politely treated, reassured, and spoken to respectfully".
Against the rules
Other officers who testified in the case stated that it is against the rules to immediately arrest someone who does not show identification. The standard police protocol is that an officer first asks for personal details such as name, date of birth, and address, to look them up in the available systems.
Another officer who arrived on the scene then said to the woman that she was "quite drunk," as heard on audio recordings. The woman denied this and said that for religious reasons she does not consume alcohol. The same officer urged her to stay where she was because he did not want her to "run away," while she had barely moved.
'Angry Black woman' stereotype
The police leadership argued in a defense that the woman did not suffer any disadvantage from the situation and added that the first officer had arrested her because of her behavior, and not because of "protected characteristics" such as race and skin color.
The members of the human rights tribunal dismissed that interpretation and considered it "more likely than not that the stereotype that Black people are prone to criminal behavior influenced the behavior of the officers." They subjected her to "unfounded, intensified scrutiny and bombarded her with derogatory remarks and accusations."
In the same ruling, the tribunal found that the decision to arrest the woman and physically restrain her "was influenced both by the stereotype of the 'angry Black woman' and by the disproportionate expectation of compliance and obedience from people perceived as racially 'different'."
Compensation
The tribunal, a semi-judicial body, awarded Elshazly compensation of 25,000 Canadian dollars for the impairment of her dignity, approximately 15,550 euros. She also received nearly 900 euros for the replacement of her phone, which was damaged during the arrest.