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REAL Indigenous Report
The RCMP Failed Canadians at Kamloops

The RCMP Failed Canadians at Kamloops

Oct 29, 2023
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REAL Indigenous Report
REAL Indigenous Report
The RCMP Failed Canadians at Kamloops
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The piece posted on the other side of the paywall was written by gifted editorial writer and retired Manitoba judge Brian Giesbrecht.

Giesbrecht questions what he calls the failure of the RCMP to properly investigate the “discovery” of the remains of 215 former Indian Residential School (IRS) students next to the long shuttered Kamloops IRS in the interior of British Columbia.

In Giesbrecht’s own words:

When it was announced that “remains” had been found of 215 former Kamloops Indian Residential School (KIRS) students in [May 2021], the local RCMP did their duty and immediately began to investigate. Indigenous leaders had claimed that the school grounds should be considered a major crime scene, and the RCMP is mandated in most parts of B.C. to investigate all major crimes…. However, for reasons that remain unclear to this day, the RCMP … shut down their entire investigation immediately after receiving orders to do so from persons unknown. This new policy — breathtaking in its recklessness — was then applied to all of the other indigenous communities that made copycat claims.”

If I may be allowed to play devil’s advocate, perhaps the RCMP did conduct a thorough investigation, at that time or in the past, determining either that no criminal activity was involved in these presumed burials or that they occurred so long ago that they were beyond the force’s historical purview. I say this because many, if not most, police investigations quietly begin and inconclusively end without any public notification.

Be that as it may, Giesbrecht’s nicely written and provocative analysis is well worth reading.

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