‘Tagging them with numbers’
Inquiry into mistreatment told of police prejudices against Indigenous Peoples
As coordinator of the Montreal Urban Aboriginal Community Strategy Network, Allison Reid remembers the suggestion well.
It was put forward by a Montreal police officer a few years ago during a consultation meeting on possible ways of helping the Indigenous Peoples who frequent Cabot Square in west-downtown.
Many of those who gather in the park are homeless. They struggle with addiction and mental-health issues, and meet there in part because of its proximity to two day centres and other services. It’s also considered a place to call home. What should the approach be?
“He believed that the strategy should be to tag the Indigenous people living in and around Cabot Square with numbers so that they could identify them,” Reid said on Wednesday. “Because their names were not important to him.
“This was the person Station 12 sent to a community meeting with Indigenous persons to create solutions to support this community,” Reid added.
She shook her head and repeated, “tagging them with numbers.”
Reid was testifying Wednesday at a public inquiry into the mistreatment of Quebec’s Indigenous Peo- ples by government institutions. Wednesday’s discussion focused on the relationship between the Indigenous community in Montreal and the city’s police force.
Outreach workers spoke of an overall lack of trust, noting how many continue to feel police in the city operate with prejudices and assumptions, using intimidation and over-ticketing, confrontational approaches and unnecessary force when intervening with Indigenous Peoples.
One example detailed how a Cree woman, who wore a colostomy bag and struggled with mental-health issues, was allegedly brought to the ground in the métro by two officers pulling her by the hood.
A man who witnessed the incident contacted Rachel Deutsch, coordinator for the First Peoples Justice Centre of Montreal.
The woman started expressing suicidal thoughts during the intervention and was sent to the hospital, Deutsch said Wednesday. But she was also given a ticket. Nakuset, the director of the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal, was in touch with the woman soon after to let her know she would file a complaint with the SPVM’s ethics committee.
“She looked at me and said, ‘You would do that for me?’ ” Nakuset recalled Wednesday. “The people being victimized are used to it, and they don’t think anyone cares,” she said. “They don’t think anyone is going to fight for them.”
The witnesses also spoke of a 2015 agreement with the SPVM, hailed as historic at the time, to improve relations between the force and the Indigenous community.
As part of the agreement, the network was to put together a pilot project offering sensitivity training to officers.
The training would be based on Indigenous pedagogy and history.
The idea was to help officers have a better understanding of what Indigenous Peoples might have lived through before an intervention.
Two years of planning and work went into the sessions.
But the plan was abandoned before it could ever get off the ground. Sessions held in early 2017 were spoiled by officers laughing, making condescending jokes and not paying attention, Wednesday ’s witnesses said.
“I don’t want to know about your history,” Nakuset recalled one officer commenting early on.
“I want to know what to do when I see a drunk Indian.”
Although a dozen 3.5-hour-long sessions were already planned and several officers said they did appreciate the lessons, the training was abruptly cancelled.
According to Deutsch, the team was told the training didn’t meet the SPVM’s needs.
Despite their experience in the field, they were told their experts weren’t qualified to train officers, and the force would instead reinstate 45-minute sensitization sessions when possible.
At a meeting afterward, Reid said, an SPVM commander told the group that in the end, it’s what the officers want that is important.
“They are the customer,” Reid recalled the commander saying.
The SPVM, Reid said they were told, would have the city of Montreal issue a call for tenders instead, and the network could place a bid if they wanted.
“We were basically cut out,” Deutsch said.
In her closing remarks, Nakuset mentioned a vigil held in Montreal Tuesday night to honour Colten Boushie, a young Indigenous man shot and killed by a white farmer in Saskatchewan in 2016.
Having organized the vigil, Nakuset arrived early.
There were only 15 or so people there when several police cars and officers arrived.
The crowd was afraid, she said. Everyone wondered why there were so many.
“You get triggered,” she said. If the commission can accomplish anything, Nakuset added, she hopes it can help alleviate that sense of fear, and replace it with something closer to a feeling of collaboration.