A video allegedly showed an RCMP officer sexually harassing an Indigenous teen. Then it went missing. Inside allegations of misconduct and cover-up in Canada’s national police force.
Indigenous communities have long complained of racism and discrimination within the RCMP. Now a video and missing document scandal in the force is raising more questions about the treatment of Indigenous people.
The video, dated to March 2017, shows an RCMP officer who’s wearing a white helmet and a black jacket having a conversation with a young Indigenous man sitting on a bench in Red Deer, Alta.
The officer is wearing headphones and appears to be listening to music. He says that the young man “needs to learn the law, as I am, and as Indigenous people are,” and tells him, “that’s not the way it is,” and “that’s not who we are.”
The officer also says that the young man has brought the video to him because he “didn’t do anything and that’s not what happens around here.”
“We have people going into our community who are drinking and doing drugs and bringing these things into our community. They need to go back,” he says.
The officer then tells the young man that he should not bring the video to the police or that the police would “look at you.”
“Look at me,” he says.
In a written police report, the officer said he tried to get the young man to leave but when he did that, he found that the man “kept coming back and started to talk.”
The young man said he had taken the video himself. He said the officer’s comments were inappropriate because he is Indigenous.
The officer was responding to what he had found in a cell phone, according to the written account, after it was returned from the RCMP.
In his statement, the young man said he did not bring the video to the RCMP and added that he did not want to make a complaint because he does not want to have his parents talk to the police like they have done in the past.
“To be used as a pawn and to be looked at like a piece of garbage when there is no actual evidence or proof has made me feel really bad,” he wrote.
The young man’s letter said