The Supreme Administrative Court (KHO) ruled on Thursday that the Helsinki Police Department discriminated against two women when they were stopped by plain clothes officers on suspicion of being prostitutes.
The case relates to an incident in July 2016, when a police patrol stopped the mother and sister of musician Musta Barbaari — real name James Nikander — in Helsinki. According to the police, the stop was related to surveillance of street prostitution, and was based on police observations as well as tip-offs.
However, Nikander's mother — who was born in Tanzania — and sister suspected that the police stop was ethnic profiling. One officer asked the women for an identity card, saying they were carrying out a spot check for illegal immigrants.
Both women refused to provide identification at the time and in December 2017 they were found guilty of disobeying a public official and refusing to follow police orders, and received income-linked day fines.
The women pleaded their case to the National Non-Discrimination and Equality Tribunal of Finland, arguing they had been victims of ethnic profiling. The tribunal subsequently found in favour of the women and imposed a conditional fine of 10,000 euros on the Helsinki Police Department.
In April 2021, the Helsinki Administrative Court annulled the conditional fine, but this ruling has now been overturned by the Supreme Administrative Court.
In its ruling on Thursday, the court said that the police had no grounds to stop the two women, and that the decision to do so was based on discriminatory ethnic profiling.
The decision was reached on a vote of 4-1.
Finland's Non-Discrimination Ombudsman Kristina Stenman commented on the case in a press release, saying the Supreme Administrative Court's decision should lead to police changing their behaviour.
"Ethnic profiling is a serious form of discrimination, especially by the police. It is unacceptable that people from ethnic minorities should be more vulnerable to police stops in their daily lives because of the colour of their skin or their supposed ethnicity," Stenman wrote.
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11.9: Fine corrected to conditional fine