Manitoba native chiefs are calling for a public inquiry into the Winnipeg Police Service in the wake of the police shooting that killed Craig McDougall over the weekend.
McDougall, 26, was shot by officers who responded to a disturbance call around 5 a.m. Saturday at a house on Simcoe Street, in the city's West End neighbourhood. Police said he had refused repeated demands to drop a knife.
At a press conference Tuesday morning outside the house, family members said police had been called to deal with a fight between two young women, and that officers had arrested McDougall's father.
McDougall had just arrived home and was talking on a cellphone to his girlfriend as the situation unfolded, family members said. The girlfriend heard everything, including the gunshots, they said.
One witness at the news conference insisted there had been no knife, and several others said he posed no danger to police because he had been on one side of a metre-high fence, while the officers were on the other.
"When I saw my son lying on the ground, I wanted to go to him to help him, but I was thrown on the ground and handcuffed," the slain man's father, Brian McDougall, said in a statement read by another family member.
"I was a few inches away from comforting my son, but I was prevented."
The family is in "deep mourning" and "shock" over the death of McDougall, described as a "good son" and "a caring person."
"We all loved him. I know my son would never harm someone with authority," the father said in the statement.
Chief David Harper of the Garden Hill First Nation described McDougall's death as "unacceptable" and questioned the use of deadly force.
"We just [saw] this past weekend a man carrying a knife [in one hand] and a head in the other hand, and he is still alive today," he said, referring to the police capture of a suspect in the brutal stabbing death of a Winnipeg man on a Greyhound bus last Thursday.
The family wants "healing and closure," the father's statement said, "but before we do that, we need the truth to come out."
Native leaders are hiring a private investigator to probe the shooting, and have retained Don Worme to represent the family's interests, they said.
Worme represented the family of Neil Stonechild at the public inquiry into his death. The inquiry concluded Stonechild had been in police custody before being found frozen to death on the outskirts of Saskatoon in 1990. He also represented the family of Matthew Dumas earlier this year at an inquest into the 18-year-old Winnipegger's death by police gunfire in 2005.
In addition to a public inquiry into the conduct of the Winnipeg police, native leaders called on the provincial government to establish an aboriginal police commission, an aboriginal justice college to train native workers in the justice system, and an independent police complaints agency to replace the current Law Enforcement Review Agency.
The government should also create a permanent special investigations unit, including First Nations representatives, to investigate cases such as McDougall's shooting, they said.
The chiefs vowed to hold "further legal and political actions," and said they will file formal complaints to Manitoba's Human Rights Commission and the United Nations.
Police said McDougall had refused to comply with demands to put down a knife. A stun gun was also used on him, but failed to subdue him, police said.
Const. Jacqueline Chaput, a police spokeswoman, couldn't say how many times McDougall was asked to put down the knife.
"Officers have to make split-second decisions in these types of incidents," she said Sunday. "They felt that they had to protect themselves. They had to protect the people around them, the public. And at that point, they had to escalate to a higher level of force.
"Our officers don't make the choice to use their firearms lightly. If they chose to in this instance, it's because they were forced to," she added.
An external police agency will review the investigation into the shooting and at least two officers will be on administrative leave during the investigation, Chaput said.
Saturday's shooting is the second recent confrontation between Winnipeg police and an aboriginal male that resulted in a death. Michael Langan, 17, died after police jolted him with a Taser in late July.
McDougall's uncle was J.J. Harper, a 37-year-old native leader who was killed by police in March 1988 after he was stopped by officers who mistook him for a suspect in a car theft.
Harper's death sparked outrage in the aboriginal community, and prompted an inquiry into the provincial justice system's treatment of aboriginal people.
The inquiry's final report in 1991 said the justice system was failing native people on a massive scale. Among its 140 recommendations were calls for an independent aboriginal child welfare system, an independent justice system for aboriginal people and more aboriginal police officers.
Movement has been made on some recommendations. Others have not been implemented; some critics have argued that not enough has been done to reform the system, while others complained the changes required to implement some would be too extensive.
Gordon Sinclair Jr., whose book Cowboys and Indians probed the handling of Harper's death, said McDougall's death illustrates how little things have changed in two decades.
"The police and the government have yet to learn any lessons from this of a meaningful kind when it comes to the justice system. Aboriginal people are still being shot. Police officers are still investigating themselves. And no one seems to care," he said.
"J.J. Harper would have said, 'I died in vain.'"