QUEBEC Allegations of police abuse of native women to be probed
Eight officers suspended after media report details complaints
MONTREAL — Police officers trading money and cocaine for sex, a missing persons case that collected dust for months, and allegations of wanton cruelty against vulnerable women.
These are what indigenous people say they have encountered first-hand in their dealings with the Quebec provincial police in the remote mining city of Val d’Or.
The allegations come from 12 aboriginal people, mostly women, from Algonquin communities around Val d’Or in northwestern Quebec, and they range from sexual to physical abuse. They involve nine officers from the city’s provincial police detachment, and though the force and the province have been aware of the claims since May, no disciplinary action had been taken against the officers until Friday — a day after a Radio-Canada investigative report broadcast the allegations in vivid detail.
Before the report surfaced, Quebec’s Public Security Minister had said she was satisfied with the force’s response to the case. The provincial police had handled it locally, then handed the file off to investigators from outside Val d’Or before transferring it to internal affairs.
But on Friday, with the full extent of the allegations known to thousands of Quebecers, Minister Lise Thériault quickly reversed her position. She announced that eight officers had been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation by the Montreal police (the ninth officer under investigation died earlier this year).
“I’m in shock,” Thériault said, in a tearful address to reporters. “There are facts in the report that were not all made known to police.”
In the damning media report, some women said they were sexually assaulted by officers, others claim to have been given money and drugs in exchange for sexual favours. Others claim their complaints to Quebec’s police ethics commissioner weren’t taken seriously.
The parents of one missing woman told reporters Friday there had been little effort by police to solve their daughter’s disappearance. There were also allegations of physical violence and what they said was the routine practice of being driven kilometres outside of town in a police car and forced to walk back in the cold. In Saskatchewan, there have been several high-profile cases of this tactic resulting in aboriginal people freezing to death.
Though Capt. Guy Lapointe defended his department’s internal affairs process, he spoke sternly of the women’s claims, calling the alleged behaviour “unacceptable.”
Québec solidaire Member of the National Assembly Manon Massé said there should be civilian oversight of a probe in which police investigate officers from another force. She wasn’t satisfied with Thériault’s about-face, decrying the fact that it took five months for the officers to be taken off front-line duty.
“I’m not surprised to see this; I must say it’s shocking to see it on television like that, but I’m not surprised,” said Tanya Sirois, the director general of Quebec’s Native Friendship Centre network. “Working with aboriginal people, it’s a small world, you hear stories, you hear rumours about what happens to these women, you see terrible poverty and abuse. ... But just because it’s not surprising doesn’t mean I’m not angry.”
Sirois said the core of the problem lies in the fact that when indigenous women leave their traditional territory to live in a city, they’re placed in a vulnerable situation where they regularly encounter racism.
“Some landlords won’t rent apartments to these women and some will flat out tell them it’s because they’re aboriginal,” said Sirois.
“You also see discrimination in the workplace, people whose job applications are thrown out, people who can’t find a safe place to live so they’re pushed into the margins. And once they’re in the margins, that’s when people, and sometimes people in a position of authority, prey on that vulnerability. They know (the women) won’t report them, they know the women don’t necessarily trust the system. My fear is, if this happened in Val d’Or, it could be happening in other cities.”
You hear rumours aboutwhat happens to these women, you see terrible poverty and abuse.... But just because it’ s not surprising doesn’ t mean I’m not angry.
TANYA SIROIS
QUEBEC’S NATIVE FRIENDSHIP CENTRE