Stacey DeBungee's family to wait months to learn Thunder Bay officer's fate for flawed death investigation

Brad DeBungee says that to get answers and accountability, it takes perseverance.

"Don't give up. Put that in bold," he told CBC News.

He has spent the last seven years fighting to learn what happened to his brother Stacey of Rainy River First Nation, after his body was found the morning of Oct. 19, 2015, in the McIntyre River in Thunder Bay, Ont.

Now, Brad has to wait again to find out what disciplinary action Thunder Bay police Staff Sgt. Shawn Harrison will face as the lead investigator in the DeBungee death case.

Greg Walton, the adjudicator, heard arguments during the two-day disciplinary hearing this week to determine Harrison's fate. Earlier this spring, Walton issued a guilty verdict against Harrison, for neglect of duty and discreditable conduct under Ontario's Police Services Act, finding evidence the officer "failed to treat the investigation equally, without discrimination due to Stacey DeBungee's Indigenous status."

Walton also found Harrison failed to take a number of basic investigative steps, like interviewing key witnesses and reviewing reports, after prematurely concluding the death was non-suspicious — a determination attributable, at least in part, to an unconscious bias.

Among the options presented to Walton for disciplinary action include a temporary demotion, all the way up to termination.

The penalty hearing began Tuesday morning with testimony from Stacey's sister, Candace DeBungee, his brother Brad and former Rainy River chief Jim Leonard. 

Brad and Leonard submitted a public complaint to the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD) in 2016 that led to the disciplinary action against Harrison, as well as a broader review of the Thunder Bay Police Service (TBPS) that found evidence of systemic racism within the TBPS.

Ontario Provincial Police are also now reinvestigating DeBungee's death, a process that has been going on for more than a year.

During his testimony about the impact of Stacey's death and the deficient police investigation, Leonard said the last seven years have not felt productive.

"I don't feel any sense of closure. There's no feeling of something being complete," he said. "We are no further today than we were in 2015 [finding out what happened to Stacey.]"

He added that community members from Rainy River First Nation "don't feel that they're safe here, and [that] there's nobody here that will protect them."

The lack of answers, and the long delay in getting to this disciplinary process, has created a sense of "defeatedness" among community members, Leonard said, just another example of how they've been wronged and nothing is getting better.