Thunder Bay Police Board chair apologizes to families after report urges more death reinvestigations

The chair of the Thunder Bay Police Services Board has broken her silence two weeks after the Broken Trust final report was submitted to the board, and over a week after it was recommended more sudden deaths of Indigenous people in northwestern Ontario should be reinvestigated. 

Kristen Oliver, who's also a city councillor, committed to keep working "to rebuild trust and transform" the Thunder Bay Police Service (TBPS).

"Ensuring investigative integrity in cases, especially involving our Indigenous communities, is paramount to rebuilding trust. Where there are areas to do more, we will ensure that happens," Oliver said during a news conference Wednesday morning.

That investigative integrity and trust in the police service was put into question last week after a confidential report for Ontario's attorney general was leaked to several media outlets, including CBC News.

The report, written by a blended team of investigators who spent years looking through TBPS sudden death investigations, was submitted to the attorney general and the police services board on March 2.

It details serious concerns with the investigations of 14 Indigenous people who died suddenly in the city between 2006 and 2019, with investigators saying they should be reinvestigated. Two other cases, with similar investigative concerns, should go for a coroner review or inquest, and another 25 unresolved cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG) in Thunder Bay should be reviewed, according to the investigators.

"The impact on these families cannot be overstated. The lack of ability to find closure and the mistrust that has been sown from these experiences with officers goes against everything I stand for," Oliver said, adding she supports the efforts to find closure and review the cases.

Oliver apologized to families that have been forced to endure repeated investigations of the deaths of their loved ones.

She repeated multiple times that trust and the deficiencies highlighted by a growing number of expert panel reports and investigations "are not going to be fixed overnight," but promised to continue their work to implement the dozens of recommendations made by the 2016 Seven Youth Inquest, the 2018 Broken Trust report by the Office of the Independent Police Review Director and the 2018 report by now-retired senator Murray Sinclair on behalf of the Ontario Civilian Police Commission (OCPC).

The board also recently hired an expert panel to help it implement these recommendations and improve the workplace culture.

The news conference came after demands for the disbandment of the TBPS.

"There are many people who have lost faith that they will get justice," said Anna Betty Achneepineskum in an interview last week with CBC News.

Achneepineskum is a deputy grand chief with the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, a political organization representing 49 First Nations across Treaty 9 and Treaty 5 in the province.

Achneepineskum said she no longer has hope the police service will meaningfully address the systemic racism toward Indigenous people that's documented in the numerous reports by police oversight agencies.