Ottawa police chief calls for “feminicide” to be added to Criminal Code

After a year of homicides and violent crimes in the capital, Ottawa’s police chief is calling for the term “femicide” to be added to the Canadian Criminal Code.

The Ottawa Police Service (OPS) used the word femicide for the first time this year to refer to the murder of Jennifer Zabarylo in Stittsville in August. Her husband was charged with murder.

The SPO would, according to him, be the first Canadian police force to have used the term in a press release.

The police force once again used femicide in October after the murder of Brkti Berhe, stabbed in front of her children in a park in the south of the city.

Asked about the use of this term, the head of SPOEric Stubbs simply replied because that was the caseduring an end-of-year interview with CBC News.

The term femicide refers to the killings of women that are motivated by misogyny or gender-based hatred.

According to the chef Stubbsadding a section dedicated to femicide to the Criminal Code would recognize the existence of a systemic problem of violence against women and ensure that the sentences handed down reflect the seriousness of this crime.

Every homicide is tragic. I’m not downplaying other homicides, but when it’s gender-based violence and we see how often it happens, I think it’s worth highlighting.

He described domestic violence asepidemic which monopolizes the agents of the unit against intimate partner violence.

They all had more than 20 cases that they were actively investigating, he said. It’s way too much.

What effects on violence against women?

Criminology expert Jean-Claude Bernheim believes, however, that this addition will have little effect on violence against women.

It is not because we have criminalized marital rape that we have had a positive effect on the reality that women face, explains Mr. Bernheim. It is in this sense that we must see social problems; we must understand their dynamics to interfere and prevent it.

The Regroupement des houses de assistance pour les femmesvictims de violence would rather like Bill C-332 to criminalize coercive control to be adopted.

This type of control includes more underhanded manifestations of abuse, such as surveillance, denigration, financial control, and isolation.

There are women who want to file a complaint and it doesn’t work. There are even police officers who will want to lay charges and fill out documents and that doesn’t work because certain types of violence are not recognized by the law.says the president of the group, Annick Brazeau.

A spokesperson for the Minister of Justice, Arif Virani, explains by email that our government is reviewing how the criminal justice system responds to cases of femicide […] and how our laws can be strengthened.

She adds that the department supported Bill C-332 and is collaborating with several stakeholders to inform the important work of eliminating gender-based violence in Canada.

Investigation into the death of Abdirahman Abdi

As part of the same end-of-year interview, the head of SPO addressed other hot issues that involved the police force.

In December, a coroner’s inquest concluded that Abdirahman Abdi’s 2016 death was a homicide. The Canadian of Somali origin died the day after his violent arrest by two Ottawa police officers while he was experiencing a mental health crisis.

The inquest jury made 57 recommendations aimed at preventing similar deaths.

Nearly half of these recommendations concern SPO. The leader Stubbs believes that it will take time to implement them, but that the police will make them a priority.

It is clear that we still have work to do, but I would not say that we have done nothing since this death and that we are now going to start.

Police funding

The year 2024 is the first of a three-year plan to stabilize the staff of the SPO. This plan provides for an increase in staff numbers of approximately 125 to 150 agents or civilians.

According to the head of SPOthis investment is necessary because the units are overwhelmed and overtime is reaching new heights.

There is almost one demonstration per day, underlines Mr. Stubbs. Some of them don’t pose a problem for the police, but others do.

With information from Arthur White-Crummey, CBC News