RCMP boss silent on query

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This article was published 12/12/2015 (3934 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — Hope from a northern Manitoba reserve that the head of the RCMP was going to help solve their policing problem faded Friday as chiefs left the annual December meeting of the Assembly of First Nations without getting a promised answer.

During the AFN general chiefs assembly Wednesday, Northlands Denesuline First Nation Coun. Joe Dantouze asked RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson for help with the band’s policing issues.

Ideally, the band wants more police presence on the reserve, which is 400 kilometres northwest of Thompson. But if they can’t get the RCMP on site more than once a month, at least they want access to the detachment’s detention cell all the time.

“Our band constables are permanently violating the criminal code every time they detain a person for the safety of that person or the safety of the community,” Dantouze said, during a question and answer session with Paulson.

For at least three years, the band constables have been forced to use a towing chain to hold people accused of a crime in the dressing room of the local hockey arena. Suspects are handcuffed and chained to one of the benches.

Paulson, the first RCMP commissioner to appear at the AFN since 2004, said he would investigate and get back to Dantouze by Friday.

The RCMP did not respond to calls from the Free Press on either Thursday or Friday.

Sheila North Wilson, grand chief of the Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, said she heard nothing about an RCMP response before she left Ottawa to return to Manitoba Friday afternoon.

But she said since the federal government scaled back resources for band constables, northern policing is heading into a crisis.

“Policing on northern reserves is a huge problem,” said North Wilson. “Ever since the band-constable program was scaled back just to be the eyes and ears of the RCMP.”

Only about half of the 30 reserves in northern Manitoba have a full-time RCMP presence. The rest rely on visits from roving RCMP officers, sometimes as infrequently as once a month.

“That’s kind of crazy because how do you predict when crime is going to happen?” she said. “Do you tell people only commit crimes on these days?”

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said it is in his mandate letter from the prime minister to address gaps in services to indigenous people in the criminal justice system.

“I will be looking at all of these things very carefully in concert with the work that my other cabinet colleagues are doing on missing and murdered indigenous women as well as the response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” Goodale said.

Churchill-Keewatinook Aski NDP MP Niki Ashton said in the spirit of reconciliation, the RCMP and Ottawa need to fix this.

“If you’re not around you’re not there to build a relationship,” she said. “I hope they’re not going to just blame it on something else because there needs to be real change.”

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca