By CHRISTINA BLIZZARD
The Toronto Sun
June 16, 2006
Frustrated by a number of assaults on his officers, the president of the union representing 7,500 OPP officers says the Caledonia standoff indicates there's one law for aboriginal people and another for everyone else in the province.
"Our concern is basically that there is a two-tier justice system," Karl Walsh, president of the Ontario Provincial Police Association said in a telephone interview yesterday.
"Laws in Ontario and Canada apply to First Nations people just like they do to everyone else. If those laws are broken, then it's our job to enforce them," he said.
The legacy of the 1995 Ipperwash standoff, when native protester Dudley George was gunned down and killed by an OPP sniper, still haunts OPP command officers, he said.
A lot of officers at Caledonia feel like they are "deer in the headlights," he said. They're constantly second-guessing their own decisions.
"They ask, if I do hurt or kill someone, is the force going to be behind me? Is the commissioner going to be behind me? Is my association going to be behind me? Is the government going to be behind me?"
Walsh says he has seen cops assaulted -- and no one prosecuted for the assaults.
He's written to Attorney General Michael Bryant complaining about one incident where four people, all natives, were arrested. But he says three of the four failed to show up for a scheduled court appearance and the one who did appear argued that the law didn't apply to him.
Walsh asked Bryant if the arrest warrants would be acted on "with the same expeditious manner that we do with all other warrants." He said he has so far not received a response.
Walsh says 14 officers have been injured so far -- and that doesn't include two who were sprayed with bear spray last week.
In another serious incident last Friday, an OPP officer was accompanying two U.S. law enforcement officers who were studying OPP policing of the standoff. He said the two Americans were dragged from the patrol car and two aboriginal protesters drove off in it, not realizing an OPP officer was in the back of the car. The officer leaped from the car, sustaining serious injuries. A notebook containing sensitive information was left in the car, and later came into the possession of a newspaper reporter.
That same day, a news cameraman was hurt at Caledonia. The cameraman later accused OPP officers of standing by and doing nothing while he was assaulted.
The reputation of the OPP is suffering, says Walsh. They are becoming the lightning rod for the ire of local residents.
"The tide has changed dramatically now," Walsh said. It's not the native occupiers who are the centre of controversy now, he says. It's the police. They're caught in the middle.
"It's not our job to negotiate a successful conclusion to Caledonia. It's not our function, yet we're being held to that task," he said, noting that he fears the OPP's reputation is being sullied.
"It concerns me because some of those charges apply to serious injury on one of our officers.
"One of those charges is attempted murder. When you assault a police officer, you are assaulting society. Everything we hold near and dear as far as the judicial system is concerned is embodied in a police officer," he said.
All the same, Walsh says he appreciates the government's hands-off approach to policing in Caledonia and says the Opposition should stop playing politics with the standoff.
No one stands to gain from this. Much of the sympathy people in the rest of the province had for native land claims has evaporated. Caledonia townspeople are frustrated that what once was a good relationship with the Six Nations reserve has disappeared.
And the cops are in the middle, taking flak from both sides.