Vancouver cop helps fellow officers understand Indigenous culture

Steve Hanuse claims not all cops are violent or racist… never addresses the claim that “All Cops are Bastards.”

By Liam Britten and Angela Sterritt, CBC News, June 21, 2017

The first time Vancouver cop Steve Hanuse had to stand up and speak at a community forum, it brought back bad memories.

Hanuse, an Indigenous officer, was asked by his superiors at the Vancouver Police Department to speak at a 1998 forum reaching out to the city’s Indigenous communities, who were furious over the recent death of Frank Paul.

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Report submitted to Ottawa highlights police abuse against Indigenous women

Sheila Tataquason, right, with supporters outside the provincial courthouse on Thursday, Feb. 25, 2016. She is suing Saskatoon police for damages she suffered when she was attacked by a police dog and arrested for a crime she didn’t commit. Greg Pender / Saskatoon StarPhoenix

by Tavia Grant, The Globe and Mail, June 19, 2017

Degrading strip searches and groping by male officers. Slamming a woman’s head on the sidewalk during an arrest. Unwillingness to report crimes due to fears of police harassment. Threats. Intimidation. Racial discrimination. Fears of retaliation.

These are just some of the accounts in a Human Rights Watch submission to the federal government to be released Monday that focuses on police treatment of Indigenous women in Saskatchewan. The organization documented 64 alleged cases, since 2014, of police abuse against aboriginal women in the province.

Homeless Inuit abused by Montreal police, photographer alleges

Photo by Michael Morris.

Police appoint aboriginal liaison officer to improve relationship

By John Van Dusen, CBC News, Sept 4, 2015

When Michael Morris was visiting Montreal this summer to photograph a graffiti festival, his focus turned to the city’s homeless population. In particular, the city’s homeless Inuit population.

Morris honed in on an area around the Cinema du Parc complex.

“I would see them getting off of buses, off of police buses in the morning,” he said.

“Anytime they would try to sit down, security would start harassing them.

“Police would hog-tie them in chains, beat them up, knock them out, choke hold them, all those different things. And just basically abused them,” he alleged.

‘Quit faking’: Police ignored Native American woman’s pleas for help before she died in jail

Image: Sarah Lee Circle Bear (Facebook.com)

by David Ferguson, Raw Story, July 28, 2015

The deaths in police custody of women like Sandra Bland and Rekia Boyd have drawn national attention to the potentially lethal threats posed to women of color by racist police.

On Tuesday, Indian Country Today reporter Sarah Sunshine Manning wrote about the July 6 death of a 24-year-old Lakota woman named Sarah Lee Circle Bear of Clairmont, South Dakota.

RCMP pays out undisclosed amount for “horrifying” treatment of First Nations woman in Saskatchewan

Ethel Pelly, photo: APTN.

by Larissa Burnouf, APTN National News, July 28, 2015
YORKTON, SASK — A First Nations woman has won an out-of-court settlement for an undisclosed amount of money against the Yorkton RCMP for mistreatment following her arrest more than three years ago.

Ethel Pelly, 42, was arrested and charged with a drug offence in February 2012 and taken to the Yorkton holding cells.

In an interview with APTN National News, Pelly said that’s where her “horrifying” treatment at the hands of the RCMP began that started with being stripped of her underwear.