A new coalition of families who’ve been affected by police violence and other advocates is asking the premier and justice minister to stamp out systemic racism in Manitoba law enforcement.
The group also wants a legislative review of the Fatality Inquiries Act to make provincial court inquests more effective.
The Coalition of Families Affected by Police Violence, which includes relatives of two Indigenous men who died in altercations with Winnipeg police in separate circumstances, as well as advocates and lawyers, plans to send a letter to Premier Wab Kinew and Justice Minister Matt Wiebe Monday.
MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS FILES
Advocate Hilda Anderson-Pyrz said the coalition thinks current police oversight and inquests are ineffective. She is among the organizers of the new coalition.
The letter, which is currently collecting signatures online, will request the province create a new public body to investigate systemic complaints about police agencies and to review legislation to make changes to how court inquests function.
Advocate Hilda Anderson-Pyrz said the coalition thinks current police oversight and inquests are ineffective. She is among the organizers of the new coalition.
Her nephew, 35-year-old James Erwin Wood, died in hospital in January, after Winnipeg Police Service officers, responding to a domestic complaint about an intoxicated man and his girlfriend, beat him with a baton and shocked him with a Taser when he didn’t comply with police requests, according to witnesses.
A probe into Wood’s death by the Independent Investigation Unit is ongoing.
Anderson-Pyrz said she and others in the group, which is receiving support from the Public Interest Law Centre, decided to join forces over shared concerns.
“WPS’s interactions with Indigenous peoples reflect discriminatory treatment, are based on racist and colonial beliefs about Indigenous people, and devalue Indigenous lives, resulting in under-policing, over-policing and police brutality,” the letter says.
Anderson-Pyrz said a new oversight body could function similarly to the Manitoba Advocate for Children and Youth — able to compel investigations into wide-scale concerns to get at the root of what causes problems and hold both officers and police agencies accountable for wrongdoing.
“We don’t have an issue with policing, it’s the systemic racism and police brutality that we have an issue with, we want to ensure that there’s policy and legislative changes that come through our advocacy,” she said.
“So you can feel safe as an Indigenous person accessing police services, because right now we know that there’s many situations where Indigenous people are dying as a result of interactions with police. They’re experiencing racism and police brutality, and we shouldn’t be having these experiences.”
She said a new body must be informed by concerns over the Law Enforcement Review Agency and the IIU — the province’s current oversight bodies — to ensure police are held to account.
“We need to really look at the procedures and how this new entity will do investigations into wrongdoings, to give them the power to be able to interview police officers, as they would anyone else who’s alleged to have committed a crime,” she said. “It can’t be a two-tiered system.”
The letter notes investigations have found systemic racism to be an issue with police for decades, from the 1991 Aboriginal Justice Inquiry report that followed the 1971 slaying of Helen Betty Osborne and the fatal shooting of J.J. Harper by a Winnipeg officer in 1988, to a 2021 report from the Southern Chiefs’ Organization.
Among the hopes for a review of the legislation around inquests — which are meant to examine the circumstances of deaths in certain cases and have judges make recommendations to prevent similar deaths in the future — would be to compel government and other agencies to act on the recommendations from judges, rather than just consider them.
“We see that recommendations are made and we see the reports sit on shelves with very little done,” said Anderson-Pyrz.
“There’s some pretty profound recommendations made in various inquests, so the recommendations have to have an implementation strategy… and have funding mechanisms to support (them).”
She added the coalition also hopes the legislative review would entrench supports for families and others affected by deaths to participate in inquests. This summer, a provincial court judge recommended the province cover the cost of lawyers to represent families at inquests, something the justice minister said the province was exploring.
Anderson-Pyrz said the coalition wants to meet with Kinew and Wiebe after they receive the letter, and would like to be involved in developing change.
“We want (my nephew’s) death to be a catalyst for change,” she said.
The coalition is holding a community meeting at the Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre at 1 p.m. Saturday.
The WPS and offices of the premier and justice minister declined comment Thursday.
erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca
Erik Pindera
Reporter
Erik Pindera is a reporter for the Free Press, mostly focusing on crime and justice. The born-and-bred Winnipegger attended Red River College Polytechnic, wrote for the community newspaper in Kenora, Ont. and reported on television and radio in Winnipeg before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Erik.
Every piece of reporting Erik produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.
Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.
Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.