Matthew Martin, President of Black Lives Matter New Brunswick, Saint John lawyer Neil Clements and Dr. Timothy Christie, regional director of ethics at Horizon Health, recently sat down with Mayor Don Darling of the City of Saint John, to discuss systemic racism in New Brunswick and the need for transparency in the police force.

Mayor Darling recently made a submission to the Saint John Police commission asking for transparency. 

"I'm disappointed to have to write a motion to the police commission that has a stern tone to demand the commission to direct the police chief to release a series of policies to be open and transparent. I'd rather it just be the culture, but in the absence of that, the only tool I have as Mayor is to bring forth a motion," said Darling. "We shouldn't need to fight for transparency. I've learned a lot in my five years of mayor, and one is that I really have a disdain for politics. I could become really skeptical and be angry about what I see, but this motion represents the anger that I have and the need to fight I have in me."

"The police force says they are getting body cameras to be transparent, but the reality of how they are going to be turned on and off still isn't being made public," said Martin. "If an officer has an altercation and turns off his camera, where do we as citizens stand? We don't know how these cameras are going to be used even though they are supposed to increase transparency.

"We need our police force to understand the history of body cams and their use to monitor their elements of interaction with people on the street. Sometimes those interactions are good, sometimes they are bad, and sometimes they end up with people being shot and killed," said Dr. Christie. "If our police force doesn't want to share their bodycam policy, that's counter-productive when it comes to combatting systemic racism."

"The body cam roll out must be delayed. We cannot implement body cams until the process has been vetted in the community," said Mayor Darling.