It’s been more than two and a half months since Edward Essue, a 29-year-old Black man from Innisfil, was killed by Barrie police. Instead of clarity, the facts have only grown more muddled. Our conversations with Black community members, both on and off the record, show grief for Essue’s family, fear, distrust of police, and demands for transparency and accountability that they say have gone unanswered.
“I can’t imagine what the family is going through,” Natasha Shakespeare, founder of Parents Against Racism Simcoe County told Simcoe Community Media about the incidence.
Essue was killed on March 6 following a traffic stop in which he was a passenger, not the driver. The vehicle was driven by Bailey Varley, a 25-year-old white woman. While Varley was taken to the police station, Essue was left at the scene with officers. Police say he attempted to flee and that an officer used a taser during the pursuit. He was killed.
What followed has only deepened community frustration. Conflicting accounts emerge over the reason for the initial stop, Varley indicated it was an expired license plate, while police cited suspicion of impaired driving. Charges against her have since been dropped, without any explanation.
Shakespeare said that she felt an immediate range of emotions when she heard about the incident. “I immediately felt like just devastated, and then angry, and then maybe fearful, and then sad,” she said, adding that she had “a lot of questions about how it happened, and more about why it happened.”
She noted that this was not an isolated incident. According to Shakespeare, the last two incidents in which individuals were killed or died in custody involving Barrie police both involved Black men, a pattern she says demands explanation.
Shakespeare pointed to local use of force data, which she says mirrors provincial and national trends. Black residents make up a small percentage of Barrie’s population, yet appear in use of force data at disproportionately higher rates. “If you’re a smaller part of the population, you know, there should be a small percentage of you that is having that experience, but that’s not the case,” she said.
On the language used to describe Essue’s death, Shakespeare was direct. “To say that he was killed is accurate, and that word comes, I think, with a different weight and a different impact and a different meaning than, you know, oh, he just died.”
She questioned why the incident received minimal discussion at the March police board meeting, where key details, including that a taser was used and that Essue died, were omitted. “Why are we not talking about this incident specifically?” she asked. “What is different about it than other incidents that have been talked about?”
Shakespeare said both Barrie police and city leaders had an obligation to respond publicly. “There should be a public statement acknowledgement,” she said. “A commitment to ensuring transparency and accountability, and assuring the community that things are going to be followed up on.”
She added that it was not too late for the mayor and police chief to engage, but that engagement must be led by the community itself. “They really should be looking to the black community to guide them in how to respond and what to do.”
For Shakespeare, the emotional weight of the incident is personal. “That could have been like my brother, that could have been my son, that could have been my dad,” she said. “It just hits you in a little bit of a different way.”
