Two-tiered justice

National Post

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Thankfully, a protest march in Caledonia, Ont., on Sunday did not end in violence. Wisely, at the last minute, organizers agreed with the Ontario Provincial Police that for their own safety and that of the public they should congregate behind the nearby Lions Club. They had originally planned on gathering on the site of the native land-claims dispute that has disrupted life in the small community, southwest of Hamilton, for the past eight months. A few of the 1,000 marchers heeded neither police nor organizers and proceeded to the barricades at the Douglas Creek Estates encampment, anyway. Five of them had to be arrested. Yet a potentially injurious or deadly confrontation was avoided.

Still, events highlighted the iniquitous way in which the law is being applied in this standoff. While police were keeping non-native marchers away from the housing development site, natives squatters and their supporters held a potluck picnic there, despite three judicial injunctions ordering them off. As has been the case since this dispute turned violent last April, the OPP have been called on to make sure non-natives obey the law, while simultaneously being politically hamstrung from ensuring natives do the same.

For instance, on June 9, when the violence peaked, native protesters in hoods swarmed an elderly couple in a parking lot near the construction site and intimidated them into leaving. A CH TV camera crew from Hamilton that had filmed the incident was then set upon. One cameraman had his video equipment taken, while another was beaten over the head and given a gash that took several stitches to close. Then natives attacked an OPP cruiser that came too close to the site. They swarmed a U.S. Border Patrol SUV, pulled American police officers from it and assaulted them, then used their vehicle to run down an OPP officer standing close by.

Yet that day the only people the police arrested were four non-natives who had come to police lines to protest the one-sided law enforcement. The two cameramen who were robbed and beaten insist that OPP riot officers just stood by and watched, despite their pleas for help. Even the union that represents front-line OPP officers had complained that political decisions were putting its members at risk in Caledonia. For many weeks, the officers were not permitted to wear flak vests when meeting with native protesters or to take back-up officers when going to the protest site, all so protesters might be given the impression that the police were non-confrontational.

But perhaps the sharpest example of the unequal enforcement of the law in Caledonia lies in the fact that two suspects, accused of some of the most serious crimes in June's riots, are being shielded by native leaders from the Six Nations reserve -- the home reserve of the squatters -- and police are unable either to find and arrest the pair or to charge Six Nations' chiefs and clan mothers with obstruction of justice.

Immediately after the riot, seven persons wanted by police on more than 20 criminal counts sought and received sanctuary on the Six Nations reserve. Elders refused to divulge their whereabouts to police, then decided to remove the seven from the reserve to a secret location "for the safety of all involved."

Since then, five of the seven have been arrested, two on or near the reserve, two elsewhere in Ontario and one in Quebec. But Albert Douglas remains at large, as does Skylar Williams. Douglas faces charges of attempted murder, assaulting a police officer, dangerous driving, robbery and forcible confinement for his alleged part in the stealing of the American police SUV and the running down of an OPP officer.

How can Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty claim there is no two-tiered justice at Caledonia while he tolerates native leaders' refusal to co-operate with police in the capture of these two? The idea is for justice to be blind to the colour of a person's skin. But in the Caledonia standoff, the law has only been blind to the alleged infractions committed by some natives.