Siksika Nation to get self-administered police service

Article content

Siksika Nation and Alberta government officials signed an agreement Monday that will guide the nation’s path to implementing a new self-administered police force, more than 20 years after it lost its first police service.

The nation’s chief is calling for equitable treatment, saying issues the nation currently experiences with law enforcement doesn’t happen in non-Indigenous communities.

“We’re the second largest First Nation in Canada from a land perspective, yet we don’t have policing,” said Chief Ouray Crowfoot. “But as soon as you go across the tracks, a 200-person hamlet (Gleichen) has an RCMP detachment; you would never see that if it was flip flop.”

Siksika Nation is comprised of around 8,000 people on more than 700 square kilometres of land about an hour east of Calgary. The nation used to have its own police organization, the Siksika Nation Tribal Police Service, but provincial and federal funding was cut off in 2002 effectively killing the service and handing law enforcement on the nation to the RCMP detachment in Gleichen.

“There’s a huge difference to have somebody come on the nation, and then somebody that’s actually from the nation that knows that nation, knows the people,” said Crowfoot.

While Crowfoot said the nation has a good relationship with the RCMP, officers are sometimes unfamiliar with areas on the nation. That issue has combined with a higher than average crime rate, and about 85 per cent of the Gleichen RCMP calls coming from Siksika, to result in tragic consequences for residents, he said.

“We’ve had people this year that passed away from domestic violence and the ambulance could not find their house; the police could not find their house,” he said. “Those critical minutes to save that life is the difference between going to an ambulance and going to the morgue — and our people, they go to the morgue a lot more than they should.”

Justice Minister Tyler Shandro said the nation has been working to install a self-administered police service for several years, recently commissioning a provincially funded feasibility study on the matter, but Shandro said delays in the federally administered system that provides funding to Indigenous forces have stalled its progress.

Typically, costs for Indigenous police services are shared between the province and the federal government, contributing 48 and 52 per cent of the funding respectively through the federal First Nations and Inuit Policing Program.

“The Siksika Nation has public safety concerns that need addressing today, and that includes crime rates that are significantly higher than the provincial average,” he said. “This (memorandum of understanding) provides a different path forward through discussions between Alberta’s government and the Siksika Nation.”

Specific details for the Siksika force, including when the service would be implemented and the exact number of sworn officers that force would hire, are currently unknown. Shandro said the next step would be for the federal government to step up with funding.

The announcement follows a provincial investment last month into three existing First Nations police services — the Tsuut’ina Nation Police Service, the Blood Tribe Police Service and the Lakeshore Regional Police Service — that will boost each organization with five new officers over the next four years. That announcement also included plans for a Community Policing Grant program, offering up to $30,000 to assist Indigenous communities and other municipalities in establishing their own police force.

In 2020, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed his government would pass legislation to recognize First Nations policing as an essential service and stabilize funding systems. It’s yet to follow through on that promise.

mrodriguez@postmedia.com

Twitter: @michaelrdrguez