Police Hostility Towards Aboriginal People Case Study

Improved Essays
Police Hostility Towards Aboriginal People
In the case of an emergency, police forces are the first to receive a call – as it is a lesson we are taught since childhood. They are our protectors from any type of malicious harm without regard to our ethnic background or our genders. In retrospect, has equality been the major focal point of police forces or does your ethnicity really come into question when in a life or death situation? This essay shall look at police hostility towards Aboriginal people and how they are treated in the Justice System, Aboriginal victimization and Racism. Does racism play a part in the amount of protection an Aboriginal person receives? Is an Aboriginal person treated fairly in the Justice System? These are few,
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A “State of Crisis” was found and it concluded that conflict exists between the CJS and traditional Aboriginal approaches (Griffiths, 2011). The plight of Aboriginal women being discriminated against is rising as the numbers of missing and murdered Aboriginal women drastically increases. According to Human Rights Watch (2011), “the failure of law enforcement authorities to deal effectively with the problem of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in Canada is just one element of the dysfunctional relationship between the Canadian police and Indigenous people” (p.140). The amount of discredited women in the files of the RCMP displays their absence in the cases of the missing Aboriginal women and girls. “The Native Women’s Association of Canada estimates that there were 582 cases of missing and murdered Aboriginal Women and girls – while RCMP places the number at less than 100” (Griffiths, 2011). Another account of Aboriginal victimization was displayed in Labrador, Canada when the frozen body of Loretta Saunders had been found dumped in a highway in New Brunswick. The Canadian Government had no comment on the increasing crisis. With the amount of victimization Aboriginal people are facing, is it safe to say that racism plays a part in the amount of protection an Aboriginal person …show more content…
They are our protectors who disregard the ethnic background of the victim and/or their genders. But has equality really been the focal point of police forces or does ethnicity really come into question when in a life or death situation? The mistreatment of Aboriginal people is involved with police hostility and how they are treated in the Justice System, Aboriginal victimization and Racism. This paper proved that racism does play a part in the amount of protection an Aboriginal person receives as well as how an Aboriginal person is treated in the Justice System. The question is; will police forces stop mistreating Aboriginal people before it deteriorates or will they continue to ignore the

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