Mushkegowuk's human rights complaint against gov't over lack of police services
From the Prince George Citizen ...
Ont. tribal council launches human rights complaints over aboriginal policing
by Scott Paradis, Timmins Daily Press (National News) , 16 July 2007
TIMMINS, Ont. (CP) - A northern Ontario tribal council has slapped the federal and provincial governments with two human rights complaints for what it says is inadequate funding for Aboriginal policing.
Mushkegowuk Council calls the problem part of the “systemic racism” that exists within the government.
Mushkegowuk Council launched human rights complaints Monday on behalf of the First Nation communities it represents, five of which are on the isolated western James Bay Coast.
The complaints come after years of negotiations with the upper levels of government, which have failed to provide First Nations with appropriate funding for policing, Mushkegowuk Grand Chief Stan Louttit said.
“We have never been able to acquire the proper resources like any other town in (Canada),” Louttit said. “We've sought legal opinion and what we've been told is that it's a form of racism.”
Many of the First Nation towns represented by Mushkegowuk do not have a police force that can actively patrol the communities 24-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week.
Instead officers with the Nishnawbe-Aski Police Service in some of these areas revert to on-call status for parts of the night.
In Attawapiskat, officers are typically on-call between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m.
This is unacceptable and fails to protect the residents' property and personal safety, Louttit said.
“There's a big difference between on call and (active) patrol,” he said. “Come 3 a.m. (criminals) know the police aren't around, they know the police aren't on patrol.”
Municipalities across Canada don't have this problem, he said.
Even on the James Bay Coast, the municipality of Moosonee enjoys between 10 and 11 police officers, a state-of-the-art police station and new police vehicles.
That's in sharp contrast to the state of policing in Attawapiskat, or much of the other James Bay Coast First Nations.
In those communities only a handful of officers are available and they typically work out of a dilapidated, make-shift police detachment, Louttit said.
Ontario and Canada began funding First Nation policing in Mushkegowuk territory in 1994 when Nishnawbe-Aski Police Service entered an agreement with the two levels of government.
The spending framework in the agreement calls for the province to pay 48 per cent while the federal government takes care of 52 per cent of police funding.