Family of ‘Iggy’ Dedam speaks out after he was shot and killed by RCMP.
APTN News: Amber Joseph says when she arrived on the scene just after her brother Steven Dedam was shot by the RCMP, she was shocked.
“When I came in they didn’t have compression on him,” she told APTN News. “He was shot three times. The first thing they did was handcuff him and say he was ‘under arrest.’
“He was shot in the chest.”
Steven ‘Iggy’ Dedam, 33, was shot by RCMP officers during a wellness check on Sept. 8 at his home in Elsipogtog First Nation, about an hour north of Moncton, New Brunswick.
The community is outraged. Signs across the community show that some read “Justice for Iggy.” A garage door in the community is covered in red handprints with the writing “do not shoot.”
Kenneth Francis is an Elder in the community. He said everyone is fed up.
“To me it’s just a continuation of something that is intrinsically wrong and the frustration is that there doesn’t seem to be anything being done abut it,” he said.
Third shooting of an Indigenous person in New Brunswick
Dedam marks the third person to be shot and killed by police in New Brunswick conducting a wellness check in recent years.
On June 4, 2020, Chantelle Moore, originally from Tla-o-qui-aht Nation in British Columbia, was shot and killed by an Edmundston police officer who was conducting a wellness check. The officer was cleared in the shooting.
A week later, Rodney Levi, 48 of Metepenagiag First Nation, was shot and killed by an RCMP officer.
Because of the relationship with police, people in Elsipogtog set up an intervention unit called Indige Watch. Members of this group would accompany RCMP officers while on wellness checks to help de-escalate situations that arise.
“They would call us when they go on wellness checks on any kind of expected confrontations we would expect to be called and we go there and we try to help the RCMP so that it doesnt go out of hand,” Francis said.
Francis said Indige Watch had been to Iggy Dedam’s house back in January. The situation was resolved peacefully.
But this time, something happened.
“What happened with Iggy is that, and as far as my information tells me, is that we were never contacted,” said Francis. “All the evidence that I have gathered up at this point in this time, in the case, there was no, not even a try to contact us.”
Dedam died in hospital.
Joseph said she felt intimidated by police when she arrived.
“I found like he [RCMP officer] was trying to intimidate me or agitate me,” she said. “This was the same RCMP officer who stopped the ambulance from leaving. I had cleared out behind the ambulance and because I knew they had to leave and I cleared it out.”
APTN News asked the RCMP about not calling Indige Watch on the night they went to Dedam’s house on Sept. 8. A spokesperson said all information goes through the province’s Serious Incident Response Team, or SIRT.
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The list of Indigenous people who have died during interactions with police across the country has risen to six since Aug. 29.
Jack Piché, 31, of Clearwater Dené Nation, some 500 km northwest of Saskatoon was killed just before 2 a.m. on Aug. 29. He was struck by an RCMP vehicle in what Saskatchewan’s Serious Incident Response Team called foggy conditions near the junction of two remote highways about 50 km southeast of the first nation.
In the early morning hours of Aug. 30, Hoss Lightning-Saddleback, 15, of Samson Cree Nation, was shot dead in Wetaskiwin, 70 km south of Edmonton by RCMP responding to a 911 call. The preliminary report by Alberta’s Serious Incident Response Team said Lightning called 911 at 12:28 a.m. and said he was being “followed by people who wanted to harm him.”
Police said he was located by an officer and disarmed. According to police, he was initially cooperative before fleeing into a field. Another officer who arrived shot Lightning.
On Sept 2, Tammy Bateman, an Indigenous woman in her 30s, died after being hit by a police cruiser in a small park in Winnipeg, Man., as police were returning a man to a homeless camp on River Ave.
Four days later, on Sept. 6, Jason West, 57, was killed by Windsor Police outside a beer store. The Special Investigations Unit said at approximately 10 a.m., officers responded to a report of a person with a weapon and the suspect in possession of the weapon was shot by police.
On Sept. 8, the same day Dedam was shot, RCMP responded to a call at Ahtahkakoop Cree Nation, 160 km north of Saskatoon that a woman, 27, had been assaulted with a machete around 8 a.m. that morning.
A 32-second video sent to APTN News shows Knife standing outside a home in the community. Police can be heard shouting at him.
“Put it down,” an officer yelled. “Put the gun down.”
Knife is seen looking away from the house, towards the police. He is holding something in one hand. In the video, which was also posted on social media, a young child can be seen running out of the house to see what is happening – then running back inside.
Knife can be seen standing, then bending over, then crouching.
After the last warning, he stands and a single shot rings out and Knife drops to the ground. The video ends.
Something has to change
In a recent interview with APTN News, a criminal justice expert said there needs to be a broader discussion on how transgressions are responded to in society.
Kevin Walby, professor of criminal justice at the University of Winnipeg said he believes more funding should go to community-led approaches to fostering safety.
“Where maybe you meet people where they’re at, you meet people with different kinds of teams-street nurses, people with skills in conflict resolution who can cool off a situation, who can mitigate something before it gets to a level where police are called in and someone is shot or tasered,” he said.
Walby called the RCMP a 150 year old colonial institution and said its model of policing is no longer working.
“We know now, very definitively a few things about it. It’s not reducing transgression. Transgression is going up and down basically in relation to social and economic conditions,” Walby said.
“Police don’t really do anything about it at all. What they do do is cause more harm through violent arrests and through criminalization to families and whole neighbourhoods.”
All six incidents are currently under investigation.
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