As details began to emerge Monday regarding the circumstances surrounding a multiple shooting incident in Wiikwemkoong, it is hard not to place those events in the balance favouring increased funding for Indigenous police services seeking access to their own major crimes, canine and domestic assault units.
Three Indigenous police services met in front of a federal court judge this past week seeking to have their funding contracts extended, citing discrimination in several of the provisions of the First Nation Inuit Policing Program contracts they have been handed with what they characterize as a take-it-or-leave-it disdain.
It is no secret that some Island reserves have been drowning under an ever-increasing wave of criminal gang members travelling from large southern Ontario urban areas—bringing with them deadly drugs, gun violence and associated terrorization of their communities.
This cannot be allowed to stand.
While we are cognizant of the trials afflicting Manitoulin’s reserve communities, they are not alone. With ever-increasing frequency, rural Northern communities are facing the same onslaught as city-based criminals seek greener pastures in the under-victimized North.
Reserves are particularly juicy targets for these violent criminals due to the historic distrust that has been inculcated by centuries of overt racism and discriminatory practices to which those communities have been subjected by those who were supposed to serve and protect and a court system that has historically weighed race and community in the balance beams of justice.
The current opioid crisis is claiming victims across the racial spectrum. Whiteness of one’s skin may have been somewhat a shield against incarceration, but the needle does not discriminate. There are few families who have not been impacted in some way by this abomination afflicting us all—and believing ourselves immune is nothing but a fool’s errand.
The distrust hampering police services in dealing with drugs, weapons and gang violence will not go away anytime soon—especially since a not-insignificant number of citizens believe some of the police are themselves involved.
Indigenous police forces must be given the tools they need in order to make their communities safe from the social parasites afflicting our communities. Not just our friends, not just our neighbours, but each and every one of us are being negatively impacted by this scourge, even if we are not readily aware of the connections.
It might come as something as a surprise that the current provincial government cut OPP funding—ideologically convinced that there was fat to be pared—leaving detachment commanders across the land scrambling to try and shore up those areas most impacted by the cuts.
It is time for our governments at every level stop counting beans when it comes to community safety and hand Indigenous police services the funds they need to keep our communities safe.
End stop.
