Break-in on reserve low priority to RCMP

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/01/2019 (2482 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On Christmas Day morning, Doris Young was in Winnipeg visiting her family. They had started preparing dinner after opening gifts.

Then, her cellphone rang.

It was a friend in her home community of Opaskwayak Cree Nation.

“Doris, I think I have your computer,” she said.

“I got sick to my stomach,” Doris said.

Her friend had answered her door Christmas morning. It was a young man carrying a computer. He said he had just received it as a gift from his friend and needed to sell it.

Suspicious, her friend handed over a few bucks. As soon as the computer was turned on, Doris’s name popped up. Her friend called right away.

Doris called her sister to check on Doris’s house. Fifteen minutes later, she got the bad news.

Doris’s front door had been kicked in and she had been robbed.

Christmas dinner was cancelled and Doris and her son drove home on slippery roads.

She called RCMP on the way and was forwarded to the detachment in The Pas. She filed a report and was told someone would be dispatched to investigate.

Doris got home at 11 p.m. and saw the state of her house. Understandably upset, she didn’t touch anything, not wanting to hurt the investigation. She and her son took photographs.

Doris called the RCMP, telling them she was home. She asked why no officer had been out to see the break-in, even talking to the same dispatcher she had spoken to earlier. She was told no investigation had been started.

She was promised a phone call once someone became available.

It was Christmas night, so Doris thought maybe officers were on holidays. She checked in to a hotel in The Pas and waited for her phone call.

Meanwhile, word had gotten around that the same young man who had obtained Doris’s computer (and gave it to his buddy as a “gift” to sell) was suspected of stealing an SUV a few doors down from Doris’s house on Dec. 21.

Doris had left her house around then.

The SUV was later found abandoned in Grand Rapids. Allan Turner, 28, of Opaskwayak Cree Nation was charged with possession of stolen property over $5,000.

Doris wondered if the two events were connected, but decided to wait to speak to police.

So, she waited. And waited.

By Boxing Day evening, no officer had interviewed Doris, her house remained ransacked and there had been no phone call.

Doris went to the RCMP detachment in The Pas. She met with an officer, who told her he had been given the wrong phone number. She offered to show him the photographs she had taken, but in her words, he “wasn’t interested.”

The officer told her to make a list of stolen items and, since no officer would come by, she could clean her house.

What he said next horrified Doris.

“He told me to go and get the computer myself.”

When contacted, a representative of the RCMP said no officer would ever say that. Doris’s son, Lorne, was present, however, and confirmed Doris’s story.

“He told me that they probably couldn’t prove who stole the computer anyway,” Doris said.

Doris insisted the computer had to be collected because it was evidence. The officer offered to contact Doris’s friend, who still had the computer.

“But he never called.”

Doris made a written complaint.

“I feel unprotected, unsafe, and that nobody cares,” Doris wrote. “How can a community operate when we can’t turn to the people supposed to help us build it? Who do we turn to then?”

At this point, Doris contacted me.

You see, Doris is my daughter’s grandmother. I see her a couple of times a year. One of the last times I saw her, she was made a recipient of the Order of Manitoba.

My question is: who tells an elder to collect her own stolen goods?

You see, Doris is a leader in Manitoba, one of our best and brightest. One of the most important contributors in education in our province’s history. She’s got awards to prove it.

When it comes to a crime on the reserve, however, she’s something else. Someone who has to collect her own stolen property.

I wonder if anyone in Charleswood has ever had to do that.

Two days later, Doris drove to her friend’s home and collected her computer.

She’s also on the lookout for her sewing machine. “I can’t sew now,” she tells me.

She also did something else. She went to the home of the accused man’s mother.

Speaking mother to mother, she asked if anything new had been brought into the house.

She says she found her television in the kitchen.

When contacted, the RCMP informed me that the accused man “remains in custody at this time.”

“We can understand the frustrations and the hurt suffered by the victims of crime, and that sometimes that can be directed toward police,” an RCMP spokesperson said. “We do our best to communicate with victims throughout the investigation and investigate every crime thoroughly, following up on tips and leads.”

RCMP say the investigation into the break and enter is “ongoing.”

I wonder if it would still be “ongoing” if this had happened somewhere else.

niigaan.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca