Police failing indigenous women in Saskatchewan
Police agencies quick to criticize report
SASKATOON — Indigenous women in Saskatchewan have been subjected to violence, invasive strip searches and other mistreatment by police, says a report from a human rights watchdog group that was quickly criticized by some police agencies.
The 32-page report from New-York-based Human Rights Watch said the group documented 64 cases of alleged violent abuse during a visit last year to the province that included talks with indigenous women and social workers.
“Human Rights Watch found evidence of a fractured relationship between law enforcement and indigenous communities,” the report states.
“The legacy of settler colonialism and racist assimilation policies — particularly the residential school system — still overshadow the present-day dynamics between police and indigenous communities.”
The treatment of indigenous people by police in Saskatchewan has been the subject of highprofile legal proceedings.
The 1990 death of Neil Stonechild, who was found frozen to death in a field outside Saskatoon, led to an inquiry and the firing of two Saskatoon police officers.
In 2001, two other Saskatoon officers were fired after being convicted of unlawful confinement for leaving Darrell Night on the outskirts of the city the previous year in -22 C weather.
The Human Rights Watch report documents more recent allegations of police abuse from indigenous women whose names were not revealed, including:
A Prince Albert woman who said an officer at a traffic stop in 2014 grabbed her ear and started hitting her because she didn’t want to leave her car with her child in it.
A woman who said she was strip-searched by a male RCMP officer in Regina in 2014, and told to remove all her clothing despite asking for a female officer to conduct the search.
A woman who said Saskatoon police stripped another, very intoxicated woman and threw her violently into an adjoining cell in 2015.
The report said victims of police abuse are reluctant to come forward publicly or file complaints because they feel they will be ignored or even punished for speaking out.
“Indigenous women told Human Rights Watch that they would not call the police to report a crime committed against them — or crimes that they witness — out of fear that the police may harass them or be physically violent toward the suspect,” said Farida Dief, director of Human Rights Watch Canada.
The report makes 16 recommendations, including a call for an independent, civilian-led unit to investigate alleged police misconduct, instead of allowing police to investigate their own.
“Saskatchewan is ... one of the five Canadian provinces that does not have an independent civilian special investigation unit,” it said.
The report also calls for more female officers to perform strip searches of women, and more training for police officers on indigenous history.
There should also be more detox facilities in the province to reduce the number of intoxicated people detained in jails or holding cells, the report said.
The Regina Police Service said it provided details of its policies to Human Rights Watch, but the group ignored them in drawing up the report.
“The Regina Police Service does not dispute the lived-experience anecdotes of indigenous women, provided in the Human Rights Watch report,” spokesperson Elizabeth Popowich said in a written statement.
“However, we do not accept that these stories can be generalized to represent the current environment and interactions between police services and all indigenous women and girls in this province.
“Since the final report excludes information about current ... policies, practices, training, recruiting and accountability, we do not believe it provides a complete, objective picture of police interactions with the community.”
The Saskatoon Police Service said in a statement it agreed relations between police and the indigenous community have been strained, but they’ve taken steps to heal.
“It is disappointing that none of those positive initiatives were included in the report.”