Losing hope, he quit the Nunavik police. Years later, many still feel unsupported by the force

A week before his 19th birthday, Johnny Saunders fulfilled his childhood dream of becoming a police officer — but it didn’t play out how he had hoped. 

Saunders was given a fresh uniform and the keys to a truck, he said, recalling the moment he joined Nunavik Regional Police, which was called the Kativik Regional Police Force at the time.

“We were all naive, but I guess we all had a dream of trying to make a difference,” Saunders said in an interview.

He was part of several Inuit officers recruited and trained for policing jobs in their hometowns in the early 2000s. 

But two and a half years later, by the time he was 21, Saunders was losing hope, “taking stress leave after stress leave,” and drinking heavily to cope. 

He also felt like he was being viewed as an outsider in his own community in Nunavik, an Inuit territory in northern Quebec.

In some cases, his time as a police officer altered his relationships with loved ones — like when he was forced to arrest his cousin for a minor offence. 

It’s something he still regrets.

“I looked into his eyes and I told him I have to,” said Saunders. 

“Putting your cousins in handcuffs that you grew up with, you know how unnecessary it is, but the law states that you must do what you must do.”

Feeling overwhelmed and unsupported by the police, Saunders quit his job. And he wasn’t the only one. 

There's been a decline in the number of local police officers on staff. 

With more non-Indigenous officers, Saunders says Nunavik has become a rotating training ground for police and is “always dealing with the new guy” who don’t always fully understand the people they’re serving. 

Advocates say that has contributed, over time, to an erosion of trust in communities and an increase in violent interventions.