A civilian oversight body will investigate whether racial bias played a role in the RCMP’s violent arrest of an Inuk man in Nunavut, and of his treatment in detention.
A video posted on Facebook soon after the June 1 incident showed an RCMP officer drive toward the man and knock him down with the open door of the vehicle. Five officers then arrested him in a rough manner, and placed him under detention in police cells, where court documents show that he was brutally beaten by a fellow inmate, before being airlifted to hospital in Iqaluit. An RCMP statement said he was charged with intoxication in a public place, after members of the public told a Mountie a man was fighting. The charge was later dropped.
The investigation, initiated by Michelaine Lahaie, chairwoman of the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP, is the third into the episode. The Ottawa Police Service is doing a criminal investigation, at the RCMP’s request, into the conduct of the officer who hit the man with the door, and the RCMP is doing an internal review.
Nunavut RCMP recorded for second time violently arresting an Inuk man
Ms. Lahaie said the commission’s review will be broader in that it will also look at the beating the man suffered in custody, whether his jailers took reasonable steps to ensure his safety, whether his conditions in detention were adequate and whether he received adequate medical care after the violent encounter in the cell.
“Consideration will also be given as to whether racial bias and/or discrimination played a role in the man’s arrest and subsequent treatment,” Ms. Lahaie said in a news release on Tuesday.
She said the commission will also monitor the police and RCMP investigations of the episode. And, she said, the commission will address whether the arrest of the man was reasonable in the circumstances.
“I am concerned with the conduct of RCMP members involved in this serious incident,” Ms. Lahaie said. “I am aware that there is historical distrust by Inuit toward the police and I am committed to increasing RCMP accountability.”
The incident, which occurred in Kinngait (formerly Cape Dorset), a community of about 1,500 people, is similar to another interaction this summer recorded on video and posted to social media. The second one happened Aug. 9, also in Kinngait, when a man sleeping on a roadway was kneed three times by an RCMP officer during an arrest for public intoxication. (He was detained until sober, then released without charge.) And the Mounties in Nunavut have been involved in three shootings, two of them fatal, since February. Ottawa Police are investigating, and expected to report soon.
Amanda Jones, the RCMP’s commanding officer in the region, said in an e-mail that she welcomes the investigation and that the RCMP will assist in any way it can.
Benson Cowan, the chief executive officer of Nunavut’s Legal Services Board, which oversees legal aid in the northern territory of 39,000 people, was encouraged by the investigation of the door incident, but said a wider review of RCMP conduct in Nunavut is necessary. He has called on the commission, in letters last June and this January, to begin such a review.
“It’s heartening to see that they’re taking action,” he said in an interview. “It would have been good to see something sooner. Fundamentally, what is needed is a broader more systemic approach. ... Simply investigating these as one-offs does nothing to address the systemic nature of the conduct. But it’s a good start.”
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Sean Fine