‘Racists’ are in RCMP, commissioner tells AFN chiefs
First Nations leaders gather for special assembly on murdered, missing women
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner Bob Paulson admitted there are racists on his force and says he does not want them there.
Paulson, who made the remarks while addressing the special Assembly of First Nations chiefs conference on murdered and missing indigenous women and girls on Wednesday, was responding to British Columbia Grand Chief Doug Kelly, who was the first chief to stand up and address Paulson directly.
“We encounter racism every single day. Some of the worst racists carry a gun and they carry a badge, autho- rized by you, Commissioner Paulson . . . We need you to confront racism in the ranks,” said Kelly, the grand chief of the Sto:lo Tribal Council.
Paulson said there is no room for racists on his police force and that if any of the chiefs are having problems, they should pick up the phone and “call me if you are having a problem with a racist” in their area.
“I hear what you say. I understand there are racists in my police force. I don’t want them to be in my police force,” Paulson said at the three-day meeting in Gatineau, Que., of hundreds of indigenous chiefs and leaders from throughout Canada.
Chiefs have big concerns over racism and how police forces interact with indigenous people. The Star series Gone: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, recently took an in-depth examination of Thunder Bay’s struggle with racism, including the unsolved hate-crime sexual assault of a mother of six.
First Nations leaders have a litany of concerns on how police forces handle cases of murdered and missing indigenous women and girls.
Last April, then aboriginal affairs minister Bernard Valcourt caused a firestorm after he told a meeting of First Nations chiefs that, in 70 per cent of the cases of murdered and missing aboriginal women, indigenous men had been the perpetrators.
That pronouncement stunned in- digenous leaders as it was not explained in the first RCMP report on murdered and missing indigenous girls and women in 2014. The chiefs challenged the 70-per-cent figure and demanded more information.
That first RCMP report shocked the nation with the tally of 1,181 murdered and missing aboriginal women and girls. Paulson noted it was the first review to use data of more than 300 police forces.
In its updated report, released this year, the RCMP said in the past couple of years, the offender was known to the victim in every solved homicide of an aboriginal woman in RCMP jurisdictions. Nishnawbe Aski Nation Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler called the notion of First Nations women only being killed by their boyfriends and spouses a “myth.”
Paulson called the revised RCMP report the “most comprehensive statistical review to date.”
The Star has highlighted concerns with some of the RCMP findings, specifically with what “known to” the victim means and the solve rates of homicides.
After the RCMP refused to answer questions on their numbers and requests to share the data, the Star spent a year putting together its own database and compiled a list of 1,129 names. (Sixteen months after the Star’s access to information request the RCMP in October provided 2,000 pages of material with all the names of the murdered and missing redacted.)
“You are starting to earn that trust and respect. Just by being here,” said Perry Bellegarde, AFN national chief, praising Paulson.