Police Relationships with Visible Minorities - A Review of the Impact of the 20-Year Effort by Police in British Columbia and Canada to Improve Visible Minorities’ Assessments of

Police Relationships with Visible Minorities – 15 Attitudes of minorities and non-minorities towards the police: Change over time The GSS panel data indicate that the views of visible minorities toward police in Canada have stayed consistently less favourable than those of non-minorities since the turn of the century. [...] It is also worth noting a couple of other surveys in the UK which illustrate how the views of ethnic minorities toward police differ on the heels of a significant event – not unlike what occurred in the US in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis. [...] Secondly, it is generally the case, that while that gap between minority and non- minority opinions in Canada has persisted since the turn of the century, the same gap has existed in the United States, Australia, most of Europe, and again to some degree in the UK. [...] Among the most researched factors that have persistently shown an association with attitudes toward the police are the number of contacts with the police, types of contacts with the police (e.g., citizen-initiated and police-initiated contacts), and personal experiences with the police. [...] What the police can do to narrow the gap between the opinions of minorities and non-minorities toward the police As noted in the introduction, police have undertaken over the years several initiatives to improve their relations with various minority groups.