Toronto Star: Over an 11-day period this past summer, police in Canada killed six Indigenous people. Four were shot:
- Hoss Lightning, 15, of Samson Cree Nation by Wetaskiwin RCMP on Aug. 30;
- Jason West, 57, by Windsor police on Sept. 6;
- Steven “Iggy” Dedam, 34, of Elsipogtog First Nation by New Brunswick RCMP on Sept. 8, and
- Danny Knife, 31, of Ahtahkakoop Cree Nation by Saskatchewan RCMP on Sept. 8.
And two were fatally struck by police vehicles:
- Jack Charles Piche, 31, of Clearwater River Dene Nation, by a Saskatchewan RCMP vehicle on Aug. 29 and
- Tammy Bateman, 39, an unhoused Indigenous woman, by a Winnipeg police cruiser on Sept. 2.
In November, four more Indigenous people were killed in separate incidents by police.
Three were shot:
- Joshua Papigatuk, 26, of Salluit, Que., by Nunavik police;
- Elgyn Muskego, 17, of Norway House Cree Nation, by RCMP and
- Jordan Charlie, 24, by Winnipeg police.
Eugene Joseph, 47, of Tl’azt’en First Nation, died in RCMP custody.
We do not yet know the details of each of these cases; culpability has not been determined. But we do know that their deaths are part of a larger pattern: Indigenous people are disproportionately the victims of lethal police force, and police are seldom charged with offences when this occurs.
A 2020 analysis by CTV News found between 2017 and 2020 an Indigenous person in Canada was 10 times more likely than a white person to have been shot and killed by a police officer. Of the 66 people shot and killed by police during that period where race or heritage was identified, 25 were Indigenous, representing almost 40 per cent of the total.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association recently reported that Indigenous people make up 5.1 per cent of the population yet represent 16.2 per cent of people killed in police-involved deaths.
There are many factors that lead to the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in the justice system. But what’s clear is that the statistics point to a systemic failure, one that retraumatizes people already among the most marginalized and oppressed in our society.
And for Indigenous families who have been failed, accountability is hard to come by.
Civilian police oversight agencies, which were created to respond when a person is killed or seriously injured by police, are rife with problems. These supposedly independent civilian agencies are not so independent; a Canadian Press review of these agencies found that of the 167 members involved in these units across Canada, 111 are former police officers, mostly white men. Meanwhile, police officers are not required to co-operate fully with investigations and are often not even required to turn over their notes.
Between 2000 and 2017, of 461 encounters where a police officer killed a civilian in Canada, less than four per cent resulted in charges by provincial Crowns. Out of the 18 charges that were laid, two resulted in convictions.
By Jeff Shantz, Contributor
Jeff Shantz is a full-time faculty member in the Department of Criminology at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, B.C.