On Wednesday, March 12, 2003, the Commission on First Nations and Métis Peoples and Justice Reform held a roundtable on policing issues at Wanuskewin Heritage Park. In attendance were the Commissioners and staff plus invited guests from a wide range of service and government organizations.

The Commission hosted a roundtable to discuss policing issues in Saskatchewan. The questions that were addressed were:

1. Perspectives on policing
2. Positive things in policing
3. Solutions: policing problems and how to take solutions to the next level
4. The Commission’s Implementation Phase: Opportunities, Barriers and Responsibilities

Problems expressed about policing included:

• Many people feel that the police complaints process should be independent from the police services. There is the perception that complaints are not investigated in good faith, particularly when police carry out an internal investigation. There needs to be an independent advocate to support people making complaints.
• Aboriginal people do not feel comfortable with current complaints processes. The RCMP Police Complaints Commissioner offered that there have been no complaints from Aboriginal people from Saskatchewan in 14 years, and only 50 complaints in total. She believes that this is due to the reluctance of Aboriginal people to exercise their rights in this respect.
• Response time, particularly in the Northern Administration District (NAD) is bad. Calls coming from the NAD are often rerouted to Regina and they involve long delays. As well, there are language barriers as many NAD residents speak Cree or Dené as a first language.
• Although stand-alone policing is available as an option for many communities, there are often deficient resources to support it. (Comment from Manitoba)
• There is a lack of understanding of one another (Aboriginal, non-Aboriginal and police) and as a result there is hesitation to mediate. Police are more aggressive to charge as a result.
• Lack of understanding can affect the prioritization of calls. For example, one woman called the police because there was a party next door and she was a single mother home alone with kids. She had to wait and wait, and when a man from the party next door came to her home she hit him on the head with a baseball bat. Only then did the police come.
• There is a lack of openness by the police towards Aboriginal leadership and community. There is a need for open dialogue between police and communities in order for them to understand one another and improve relationships. Good relationships also help officers understand more fully the community context of their work. Officers need to police communities according to the context of the community, not according to official regulations.
• Police are not utilizing the full resources of community due to lack of trust. Communities are capable of doing much more than they are entrusted or resourced to do.
• There should be store-front offices in Aboriginal communities.
• Police need to be more involved with communities, particularly with youth. Youth need to feel more important and need a relationship with police that goes beyond investigative work.
• There is racism in policing. It is important to note that racism does not come from policing culture, it comes from non-Aboriginal mainstream culture. If there is more participation in community cultural events by police, racism will disappear with understanding, interaction and connections.
• Police management boards and community police boards are badly under-resourced, especially in northern communities where travel is difficult and expensive. The people who sit on these boards are volunteers and they suffer from high levels of burnout.
• The lack of consistent budget cycles between federal and provincial government makes accessing funding difficult. The difference in criteria for funding between the two governments further complicates access.
• Hiring Aboriginal police officers cannot be a simple cosmetic process, there has to be cross-cultural awareness.
• There is a lack of drug and alcohol enforcement by the RCMP in the NAD. There is a general feeling that "bottom of the barrel" officers are sent up north because others do not want to go. Police officers posted up north burn out as well due to high workloads and relationship problems with community.
• The police need greater resources for the implementation of Youth Criminal Justice Act. There also needs to be more crime prevention activities and capacity building in communities. There is an uneven application of diversion due to the differing levels of capacity available in communities.
• The offences that are eligible for alternative measures need to be expanded to include domestic violence cases.
• Many justice programs, services, policies and legislation reflect conservative middle class non-Aboriginal viewpoints of the people who design them, and as such, do not adequately meet the needs of the people they are supposed to help.

2. POSITIVIES ON POLICING:

• The First Nations Policing Program - having officers in the community, particularly where they can act as role models, is working.
• There have been some good initiatives coming out of community police board work. For example, the banishing of glass beer bottles in La Loche has ensured that "broken bottles are no longer the weapon of choice."
• Interagency initiatives such as the Domestic Violence Unit with the Regina Police Service are successful. Agencies can share information with one another keeping everyone better informed in terms of client and community needs. Such relationships prevent antagonism between agencies making work/projects/initiatives more difficult to criticize.
• The domestic violence training that RCMP took in the Saskatoon area improved the service of those who needed assistance in domestic violence cases.
• Ongoing cross-cultural participation improves understanding of and relationship with communities.
• Police interaction with youth has helped decreased crime statistics in some communities.
• Specific items mentioned as successes include:
  • TARGET (due to partnerships involved)
  • Alternative dispute resolutions
  • Cadet Corps
  • Elder ride alongs with police in the community
  • Funding parity with RCMP (for stand alone policing)
  • Security Forces (Onion Lake)
  • FSIN, Saskatoon Tribal Council and Saskatoon City Police crime prevention initiative (based on medicine wheel philosophy)
  • Recreational activities involving police officers and youth
  • Regina Auto Theft Strategy
  • Community Tripartite Agreements (CTAs) (there was comments stating that these are good in principle but are under resourced)

There are two aspects to this. There are policing problems internal to the police services and perhaps police culture; and there are problems that police have with communities.

• Need more funding resources. More funding should be redirected to community.
• Study the cost of doing nothing.
• Criminal justice issues do not originate in the criminal justice system, we need to address the roots of crime. For example, there is a lack of treatment and detox centres, particularly for youth.
• Need to work from bottom up and not the other way around.
• There is a need for continued partnerships with stakeholders, including communities and not just community leadership. Political agendas often differ from community agendas. This is crucial to the continued improvement of program delivery and design.
• Need to incorporate traditional methods of dealing with problems into the justice system i.e. Healing/community/talking circles.
• First Nations people should exercise their treaty rights to administer their own justice.
• In order to make them more familiar with views other than middle class non-Aboriginal conservative ones, officers must be immersed in the environment that they police. Because officers don’t usually do this voluntarily, they should be directed to.
• Police services must act in an assisting manner to mobilize communities. They can do this by assisting community justice committees, criminal justice workers and justice co-ordinators in preventative ways (crime prevention?).
• Youth should be more involved and learn more from hearing people discuss problems. This applies to community policing/crime problems, traditional ways of approaching problems and traditional cultural ceremonies.
• Should establish a province-wide Aboriginal police service.
• The RCMP Act needs to be changed to make the investigation of police complaints more transparent.
• The Edmonton Police have a civilian police complaints officer, this allows the public to be a part of the process from the beginning.
• Educate children from kindergarten up to prevent stereotyping and discrimination.
• Eliminate 12-hour shifts and privatization.
• We need to spend more money on healthy homes at the start of life rather than jail.

3. THE IMPLEMENTATION PHASE:

OPPORTUNITIES, BARRIERS AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• A common vision of what change will look like needs to be developed.
• The political will needs to exist along with the appropriate funding to avoid designing failure into the model.
• Policing needs to work with other tools in the community to develop community. Community development is at the core and failure is not an option.
• Take money saved with diversion and put it back into the community to develop crime prevention programs.
• There was a caution here about moving through a transition like this without establishing clear boundaries.
• The resurgence of traditional lifestyles/beliefs and the calls for Elders are an opportunity that needs to be developed. The values are healthy and sustainable, and assist in the building of community. Stereotypes will disappear and support will increase when the non-Aboriginal community sees Aboriginal values working.
• Aboriginal people must be involved in the design of services and not just the delivery.
• There needs to be Aboriginal advice and involvement at the executive level of government, particular where policy is designed.
• There should be a consideration that mediation is mandatory, the immediate response.
• There needs to be a review of existing legislation.
• Re-evaluate Saskatchewan’s police complaints investigator’s office.
• Territorial walls between the FSIN, MNS, RCMP, police services, municipal, provincial and federal governments need to come down so real communication can occur.