Reckoning with Racism: Police, Judges, and the RDS Case

Reckoning with Racism considers the RDS case. A white Halifax police officer had arrested a Black teenager, placed him in a choke hold, and charged him with assaulting an officer and obstructing arrest. In acquitting the teen, Judge Sparks remarked that police sometimes overreacted when dealing with non-white youth. The acquittal held, but most of the white appeal judges critiqued her comments, based on the tradition that the legal system was non-racist unless proven otherwise. That became a matter of wide debate.

This book assesses the case of alleged anti-white judicial bias, the surrounding excitement, the dramatic effects on those involved, and the significance for the Canadian legal system.