The Many 'Distressing' Issues Raised By The Taser Incident

By Michelle Cyr-Whiting

Prince George, B.C. - 'Distressing' - it's a word that's been used over and over again in the eight days since a member of the Prince George RCMP tasered an 11-year-old Aboriginal boy.

And the President of the Native Courtworker and Counselling Association of B.C. says he has no doubt it will be distressing to the public for quite some time.  Hugh Braker says there's probably no one more distressed than the young boy, himself.

"We deal with youth in court every single day of the year and I can tell you without a doubt that many of the Aboriginal youth we deal with who are in conflict with the law suffer from underlying issues such as mental problems, addictions, fetal alcohol syndrome, fetal narcotic syndrome," he says.  "Those issues need to be dealt with, but what I mentioned it for, is that Aboriginal children very rarely understand their rights in the system."

"An 11-year-old is not going to understand what his rights are, his relationship and the way he looks at the police is going to be different than the way an adult does, so I imagine it's very distressing to everyone."

Braker says for Aboriginal leaders, the distressing factors are two-fold:  1. the boy's age, and 2. it is, yet again, another case where an Aboriginal person has been treated badly by the criminal justice system.

He says, "We have a really hard time trying to think of a single case where an 11-year-old should be tasered, we just can't.”

"It just boggles our minds and that is just complicated even more by the fact that we now have, once again, a police force investigating a police force over an alleged possible wrongdoing."

The West Vancouver Police Department is conducting a criminal investigation into the circumstances surrounding the tasering.  Yesterday afternoon, the Commission for Public Complaints against the RCMP announced it would be conducting its own investigation. 

Braker says the CPC investigation is no more acceptable.  "We're not happy with it at all," says the NCCABC President, "The Commission was set up by the government without consultation with Aboriginal people and how can we have faith in it, if there isn't consultation when it's first set up."

B.C.'s Solicitor-General, Shirley Bond, said earlier this week she hopes to have a civilian-led independent office open in the province by the end of the year.  There, too, Braker points out, that native courtworkers have been helping Aboriginal people with their rights in the courts in B.C. for 38-years and, says, "We have not yet been approached by the government to assist in this matter or put our thoughts forward."

Braker says while the individual case is distressing, so are the overall statistics.  "We've always got in the back of our mind: why is it that so many of the people who die while in police custody are Aboriginal, why is it that so many of the youth in custody in Canada are Aboriginals, why is it that so many of the adults in custody are Aboriginal."

"Now, I could keep going on with the statistics," he says,  "But they point to, to us, a very distressing fact and that's that Aboriginal people, we think, are being treated very badly by the justice system."

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