Policing with marginalized communities: poverty, homelessness, disability and 2SLGBTQI+ people

The ninth class meets not in the classroom but at Harbour House, the men's shelter two blocks from Eastgate Park. Its director, Tom Okonkwo, gives the students a tour and then sits with them in the dining room. He tells them that the men who stay there have more contact with the police than almost anyone else in the city, and that almost none of it is because they committed a serious crime. 'They're moved along, ticketed, woken up, searched, taken to hospital, taken to cells,' he says. 'Some officers know them by name and treat them like neighbours. Some treat them like garbage. The men know which is which, and so do I.'

What marginalization means

Marginalized communities are groups pushed to the edges of social, economic and political life, with less power, fewer resources and less voice in decisions that affect them. Poverty, homelessness, disability, mental illness, addiction, sexual orientation and gender identity, race and immigration status can all be sources of marginalization, and many people experience several at once. A person may be Indigenous, homeless and living with a disability, and each part of that experience shapes how they encounter the police. Researchers use the term intersectionality to describe how these overlapping identities combine to create distinct experiences.

Marginalized people are often both over-policed and under-protected. They are over-policed because their lives are lived in public, their behaviour is more visible, and some laws, such as those against sleeping or drinking in public spaces, fall mainly on them. They are under-protected because they are victimized at high rates but are less likely to report, less likely to be believed when they do, and less likely to see offenders held accountable. Desjardins says that recognizing both halves is the starting point for fair policing of these communities.

Poverty and homelessness

Homelessness has become more visible in many cities in recent years, including in encampments in parks and public spaces. Police are often called by residents and businesses who want encampments removed, and by service providers who want help with safety. The legal framework for responding has been shaped by the courts. In Canada, courts in British Columbia, such as in Victoria (City) v. Adams (2009) and Abbotsford (City) v. Shantz (2015), held that bylaws completely prohibiting people from sheltering overnight in parks when there were not enough shelter spaces violated section 7 of the Charter. In 2023 an Ontario court reached a similar conclusion in Waterloo (Regional Municipality) v. Persons Unknown, concerning an encampment in Kitchener. These cases limit how municipalities, and police enforcing municipal bylaws, can respond when people have nowhere else to go.

Whatever the law allows, enforcement alone rarely solves homelessness. Moving people from one place to another often means they lose belongings, identification and medication, lose contact with outreach workers and end up in another public space. Research on encampment responses suggests that the most effective approaches combine outreach, offers of housing or shelter that people can actually accept, storage for belongings and coordination between police, outreach workers and housing services. Police have an important role in safety, in responding to crimes against and by people experiencing homelessness, and in connecting people to services, but they are rarely the right lead agency.

Okonkwo gives the class practical advice. Learn people's names. Explain what you are doing and why. If you are asking someone to move, tell them where they can go and when. Do not throw away belongings without warning, because a bag may hold someone's identification, medication or the last photographs of their children. Remember that many people experiencing homelessness are victims of assault and theft, and take their reports seriously. And know the outreach workers: one call to the right person can solve a problem that a ticket never will.

Data from Eastgate Park

Constable Ferreira has tracked the outcomes of calls involving people experiencing homelessness in and near Eastgate Park since the community response unit began working with outreach staff.

# Outcomes of calls involving people experiencing homelessness near Eastgate Park, 2025
outcomes = {"connected to outreach or shelter": 164, "taken to hospital": 47,
            "advised or moved along, no further action": 98, "ticket or bylaw charge": 21,
            "arrest": 30}
total = sum(outcomes.values())
helped = outcomes["connected to outreach or shelter"] + outcomes["taken to hospital"]
enforced = outcomes["ticket or bylaw charge"] + outcomes["arrest"]
print("calls:", total)
print("connected to help:", helped, round(helped / total, 2))
print("enforcement outcomes:", enforced, round(enforced / total, 2))

calls: 360
connected to help: 211 0.59
enforcement outcomes: 51 0.14

Of 360 calls, 0.59 ended with the person connected to outreach, shelter or hospital, and 0.14 ended in a ticket or arrest. The arrests were mostly for assaults, thefts and warrants, not for being homeless. Ferreira says the number she wants to bring down is the 98 calls that ended with someone simply being moved along, because those are calls where nothing changed. She is working with the outreach team on a protocol under which officers will call an outreach worker before moving anyone who is not committing an offence.

People with disabilities

People with disabilities include those with physical, sensory, intellectual, developmental and psychiatric disabilities, and disability affects police encounters in many ways. A deaf person may not hear commands. A person with autism may not respond to questions as expected, may avoid eye contact, may repeat words or may become distressed by lights, sirens or touch. A person with an intellectual disability may agree to things they do not understand, which matters for consent searches and for interviews. A person with cerebral palsy may be mistaken for someone who is intoxicated. In each case, behaviour that an officer might read as noncompliance, evasion or impairment may be a feature of the disability.

The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005 and the Ontario Human Rights Code require police services to accommodate people with disabilities to the point of undue hardship, and the Charter's equality guarantee covers mental and physical disability. Courts also examine the reliability of statements and consents given by people with intellectual disabilities with particular care. Practical steps include asking whether the person has a disability or needs an accommodation, speaking clearly and simply, allowing extra time, reducing noise and light where possible, avoiding touch unless necessary and explaining it first, using a qualified sign language interpreter for deaf people, and involving a support person or caregiver when appropriate. Some communities offer voluntary registries where families can share information about a person with a disability, such as their communication needs and calming strategies, so that responding officers can see it.

Mental illness and addiction are covered in depth in LES-114, the next course. Desjardins notes here only that people with mental illness are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators, and that many of the calls involving them are calls for help, not reports of crime.

2SLGBTQI+ communities

Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and other sexual and gender minority people, often abbreviated 2SLGBTQI+, have a complicated history with police in Canada. Until 1969, sex between men was a crime. Police in many cities raided gay bars and bathhouses, and in 1981 the Toronto bathhouse raids led to the arrest of more than 300 men and to large protests. From the 1950s to the 1990s, the federal government, with RCMP involvement, investigated and purged thousands of public servants and military members because of their sexual orientation, a period known as the LGBT Purge, for which the Prime Minister apologized in 2017. More recently, the 2021 report of an independent review led by Gloria Epstein, Missing and Missed, examined the Toronto Police Service's handling of missing persons cases, including those of men later found to have been killed by a serial murderer in the city's gay village, and found serious systemic failures.

Today, police services in both countries have liaison officers for these communities, and many officers are themselves members of them. But relationships remain strained in some places. Debates about whether uniformed officers should march in Pride parades reflect deep differences of view within the communities themselves. For officers, the practical points are straightforward. Use the name and pronouns a person uses for themselves. Follow your service's policy on searches of transgender and non-binary people, which usually allows the person to say whether they prefer an officer of a particular gender to conduct the search. Take reports of hate-motivated crimes seriously and record the motivation. And recognize that a person reporting intimate partner violence in a same-sex relationship needs the same response as anyone else.

Common threads

Desjardins draws the threads together. Marginalized people are more likely to be victims and less likely to report. They often have the most contact with police and the least power in those encounters. Their behaviour may be misread because of disability, culture, trauma or circumstance. They are frequently better served by other agencies, with police in a supporting role. And they judge the police by the same standards as everyone else: voice, neutrality, respect and trustworthy motives. An officer who treats a man sleeping in a doorway with the same courtesy they would show a homeowner is practising every principle in this course.

Marco asks whether officers have time to do all of this on a busy shift. Okonkwo answers before Desjardins can: 'Learning someone's name takes three seconds. Calling the outreach worker takes one minute. Coming back to the same doorway every night for a year because nothing changed takes a lot longer.'

Sex workers and people who use drugs

Okonkwo adds two groups that he says police often overlook as victims. Sex workers face high rates of violence, and the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act of 2014 made purchasing sexual services a crime while generally exempting sellers from prosecution. Many sex workers do not report violence because they fear arrest, eviction or the loss of their children, and violent offenders know that. People who use drugs face similar barriers. Canada's Good Samaritan Drug Overdose Act of 2017 protects people who call for help at an overdose from simple possession charges, to encourage calls. Officers who know these protections and explain them can save lives, and officers who treat reports of violence against sex workers and people who use drugs as seriously as any other report can help stop offenders who target the people least likely to come forward.