Nuu-chah-nulth leaders are again voicing frustration after a young Tla-o-quiaht member was shot by police without consequence.
Julian Jones was shot and killed by Tofino RCMP in February of last year in the village of Opitsit, while Chantel Moore was shot and killed in June of 2020 in New Brunswick by an Edmundston City Police Officer.
Both cases were investigated and the officers cleared of any wrong doing, and NTC President Judith Sayers says that’s wrong.
“We just never seem to be able to find justice for our people in police shootings,” she said. “They need training to shoot to disarm. Why do theyhave to shoot somebody four times; in Chantel’s case it was five times. Why do you need to shoot so many times? I feel like the system is stacked against us and I don’t know when we’ll ever get a ruling that the police were wrong.”
Sayers wants officers trained in disarming and de-escalation techniques instead of reaching for their guns first, and setting up an alternate system for wellness checks where trauma informed people respond as opposed to police.
A 2020 analysis found that Indigenous peoples are 10 times more likely than a white person in Canada to have been shot and killed by a police officer since 2017.
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