Marc Miller ‘Outraged’ Over Incidents Of Police Violence Against Indigenous People
Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller says there needs to be “a full accounting” for acts of police violence against Indigenous people that have sparked outrage in recent days, saying they are part of a problem that “keeps repeating itself.”
At an Ottawa press conference Friday on the COVID-19 crisis, Miller was asked what he would say to Indigenous people in Canada who don’t feel safe calling the police.
Video surfaced this week of an RCMP officer in Kinngait, Nunavut using the door of a moving police vehicle on Monday to knock over a 22-year-old Inuk man. Chantel Moore, a 26-year-old Indigenous woman, was killed by police in Edmundston, N.B Thursday after they were called for a “wellness check.”
“I watched in disgust, yesterday, a number of these incidents,” Miller said. “A car door is not a proper police tactic. It’s a disgraceful, dehumanizing and violent act. I don’t understand how someone dies during a wellness check. When I first saw the report, I thought it was some morbid joke.”
Watch: Jurisdictional squabbles no excuse for poor policing, Miller says
While acknowledging that the matters are under independent investigations, Miller suggested he shares the same feelings as many across the country.
“I’m pissed. I’m outraged,” he said. “There needs to be a full accounting of what has gone on. This is a pattern that keeps repeating itself.”
Miller said Moore’s death is something he “can’t process,” and demands answers. Edmundston police have said an officer was confronted by a woman who had a knife and was making threats. She was shot and killed at the scene.
Quebec’s independent police investigation agency is assisting the probe into the Edmundston shooting at the request of the RCMP, which is providing forensic support.
The Ottawa Police Service, which does independent investigations of police in Nunavut, has sent a team there, as well, The Canadian Press reports. The officer involved in that incident has...
