TYENDINAGA MOHAWK TERRITORY—A decade has passed since relations between Indigenous people and police here reached a breaking point. And what happened after an explosive incident continues to be questioned.Amnesty International is calling on the province to launch an independent probe into why OPP officers held five Indigenous men in plastic handcuffs for hours after jailing them following a 2008 protest near Prince Edward County.One man’s wrists were tied together overnight in custody, Amnesty says. According to a former OPP officer and the force’s internal policy, that may have violated the OPP’s own guidelines.Plastic or nylon restraints “shall not be applied tighter than required and shall be removed as soon as it is reasonable to do so,” Ontario Provincial Police Orders read at the time of the protest, according to a 2016 internal investigation the OPP conducted in response to pressure from Amnesty. Amnesty wants an inquiry to determine if officers used the cuffs to inflict pain and suffering, Craig Benjamin, Indigenous rights campaigner for Amnesty International Canada, told the Star. “If the cuffs were used for any of these purposes, there needs to be consideration whether there should be criminal charges,” he said. Plastic cuffs are dangerous because they can continue to tighten after they have been applied to prisoners’ wrists, according to a 2012 independent review of police actions at the 2010 G20 summit in Toronto. “In all cases, handcuffs should be removed from prisoners who have been searched and lodged in cells unless there is good reason to continue their use,” said that report, by the Office of the Independent Police Review Director.Benjamin said the OPP’s response to the 2008 protest was a test case for the landmark Ipperwash Inquiry into the 1995 shooting death of an Indigenous protester by a police sniper. The scale of the OPP response and use of plastic cuffs on the Indig ...
|
