Saskatchewan’s police forces have earned an honour of which to be proud: they have the best record of any province in solving cases of murdered Aboriginal women.
A report released last week by the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) said more than 580 Aboriginal girls and women have been murdered or have disappeared in the past several decades in Canada.
Nationally, police solve 84 per cent of homicides of non-Aboriginal women, but that rate drops to 53 per cent for homicides involving Aboriginal women. In Alberta, the rate is 50 per cent.
Saskatchewan tops the list of solving cases of homicides involving Aboriginal women, with a “clearance rate” of 78 per cent.
The director of the branch of the NWAC which authored the report, Kate Rexe, was very complimentary, saying she believes there is a commitment in Saskatchewan to such cases that is taken seriously.
A statistic and compliment such as these are surely welcomed by Saskatchewan police, who have been in the national spotlight in the past regarding their alleged actions toward Aboriginal people.
The Neil Stonechild inquiry, for example, brought forth the alleged practice of of Saskatoon police picking up and abandoning Aboriginal people on the outskirts of the city. (The inquiry found Stonechild, an Aboriginal teen, had been picked up by police shortly before he died in of hypothermia in a field outside of Saskatoon, but also said the police investigation was not adequate to conclude what the exact circumstances were regarding his death.)
Saskatchewan is just six percentage points away from matching its clearance rate of cases of murdered Aboriginal women with that of non-Aboriginal women.
That’s certainly a small gap — but a gap nonetheless.
That hasn’t gone unnoticed by Saskatchewan police chiefs.
In reaction to the report’s findings, Prince Albert police Chief Dale McPhee, also spokesman for the Saskatchewan Association of Chiefs of Police, said: “There is still work to be done.”
