High-risk operation: Investigating racial disproportionality in Canadian SWAT team use of force incidents and challenging police militarization’s colorblind construction
Police militarization in Canada is largely framed as a race-neutral crime control strategy in the Canadian literature Much of the existing research omits race as an analytical category and fails to critically engage with how the socially constructed threat of racialized criminality is foundational t...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2026
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| In: |
Journal of ethnicity in criminal justice
Year: 2026, Volume: 24, Issue: 1, Pages: 75-113 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Keywords: |
| Summary: | Police militarization in Canada is largely framed as a race-neutral crime control strategy in the Canadian literature Much of the existing research omits race as an analytical category and fails to critically engage with how the socially constructed threat of racialized criminality is foundational to legitimizing police militarization. This article offers the first enumeration of racial disproportionality and disparity in use of force incidents involving tactical units. This article analyzes over 1100 use of force reports obtained from seven municipal police services in southern Ontario. The results demonstrate the racially disproportionate impact of police militarization on the Black community, who are overrepresented in use of force incidents across all municipalities in comparison to their overall proportion of the population. The results are further contextualized through applying critical race theory and Wacquant’s work on urban marginality and precarity. The findings challenge the race-neutral portrayal of tactical units, and police militarization, laying the groundwork for more substantive empirical analyses. |
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| ISSN: | 1537-7946 |
| DOI: | 10.1080/15377938.2025.2595417 |
