Unworthy Victims: Investigating the Police

 

The maple leaf is one of the most enduring symbols of Canada.  It has a sensational shape. Added to that, in autumn it morphs into a leaf with stunning colours. I particularly like them when the green is leaving the leaf but not yet entirely. Those are my favourite. I had expected more of these leaves in the Thunder Bay area, but there were many. I was grateful for that. I was content.

The Thunder Bay police were investigated by the Office of the Independent Police Review Directorate, who concluded “Overall I found that systemic racism exists in Thunder Bay police service at an institutional level.” The Ontario police watch dog found the problem runs right through the ranks. Directly after that, Senator Murray Sinclair released his investigation into the Thunder Bay police board and found they were also guilty of systemic racism.

9 cases were re-opened as a result of the investigations and 4 of those were of the 7 fallen feathers. Justice Sinclair said he did not have faith in that system however:

“that is because the resistance level is so unspoken and so present. The impetus to blame the indigenous victim was huge. It still is. I would be surprised if it changed so quickly. I’m sure that they say it’s changed but I would be surprised if there had been any significant change in that attitude because that is an ingrained attitude. And that attitude was allowed to permeate the system within the Thunder Bay police force and the board was primarily responsible for trying to change it and doing something about it and they didn’t. They didn’t even see it as a problem.”

 

It’s very difficult to see something you believe is not there. That is like racism itself.  Over and over again I have heard non-indigenous people decline to accept that systemic racism exists, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Resistance to uncomfortable truths runs deep in Canada, just as it does in the United States. People don’t want to accept the fact that our societies are deeply racist. That is exactly how institutional or systemic racism works and why it is so difficult to uproot.

 

In the film Colonization Road, Lawyer Julian Falconer put it well:

what racism is about is less than worthy victims. Their deaths were not worthwhile enough to make it worthy of a competent professional investigation. That is the message. It’s what they do when the investigate another dead drunk Indian!”

 

Jody Porter also put it well:

“How many times do you have to rediscover the same problems, the same racism within the institutions that are supposed to be helping before you say, ‘It’s not them; it’s us?

 

The fundamental problem is indifference. As Porter added,

Indifference can kill people especially when it is young people asking for help. Seeking a better life. If you are indifferent to that as a community, then death seems like a natural consequence.”

Too many of us are indifferent to what happened there. It is not our business. We are busy with our own business. I am no better than anyone else about this.

 

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