[Witness spoke in St’at’imcets and provided the following text:]
K’alhwá7al’ap nsek’wnúk’w7a. Dee Doss-Cody nskwátsitsa. St’at’imc, xaxl?i´pmeckan xaxli’p.
[Witness provided the following translation:]
Hello, friends and relatives. My name is Dee Doss-Cody. I am St’at’imc, from Fountain, crest of the hill.
[English]
Good morning, everyone.
My name is Dee Doss-Cody. I'm from the St'at'imc Nation and the Xaxli'p Fountain reserve.
I am the chief officer of the Stl'atl'imx Tribal Police Service. We were established in 1988. We are a program-funded, stand-alone police service, the only stand-alone police service in the province of British Columbia.
Stl'atl'imx nation consists of 11 communities, and the Stl'atl'imx Tribal Police Service provides policing to 10 of the 11 communities in the Stl'atl'imx nation.
The Stl'atl'imx Tribal Police Service falls within two different RCMP policing jurisdictions in the Stl'atl'imx territory. We are part of the Sea to Sky RCMP district as well as the Kelowna district, which is a southeast district. Our traditional territory spans both those districts. As you will note, communicating with two different entities and two different Crown options creates some challenges for the Stl'atl'imx Tribal Police Service.
We are governed by the provincial Police Act in the province of British Columbia. We have an MOU with the IIO, the Independent Investigations Office.
Our police officers are trained at the Justice Institute of British Columbia. Our training is the same as the Vancouver city police service or any other municipal police service in the province of British Columbia. Our officers can apply to other agencies if they wish to go forward and resume their career with another police agency. We have the exact same training in the province, and we adhere to the same police standards in British Columbia.
We have entered into a 10-year funding agreement, which is a tripartite agreement with the 10 Stl'atl'imx nation communities, the Province of British Columbia and Canada. The chiefs of the Stl'atl'imx have signed that agreement, and that is how we came to be.
We do have a culture component to our policing. The Stl'atl'imx nation has a declaration day, which was just a couple of days ago. In 1911, a declaration of the Lillooet tribes was signed. Every year, that day is recognized, much like Canada Day, if you will. Each time a new officer joins our police service, they are sworn in. The nation has created their own swearing-in ceremony. When we have a new officer, they are drummed in and welcomed in by the nation, and they then come and dance in. They are welcomed in by the nation as an acknowledgement of their choosing to join the Stl'atl'imx Tribal Police Service. That is one of the things that we do.
The Stl'atl'imx Tribal Police Service, as you have heard from the FNCPA, is not legislated. We are a program. We are funded as a supplemental service. We are not a supplemental police service; we are the police service for the Stl'atl'imx nation, but we are funded with program dollars, and programs can be cut, so there's no sustainability. There's fear that if it's decided, we will no longer exist.
The Stl'atl'imx Tribal Police Service has one of the highest Criminal Code stats in the province of British Columbia. We are second to the Victoria police service. We investigate everything from domestic assault and sexual assaults to serious motor vehicle accidents. We get assistance from specialized police services in the RCMP. If there's a fatal accident, we have them come in, or we have IHIT, the integrated homicide investigation team, come in if we have a homicide that occurs in our community. We do rely on the RCMP and we partner with them. We have a good working relationship. We are currently working on a new MOU with the RCMP so that it's clear to everyone what our roles are in our policing jurisdictions.
We do have restorative justice in our nation. We have utilized it. It is effective. Currently with COVID, it is challenged, due to the fact that people can't get together. That creates some issues.
Currently there are 12 police officers. We did receive extra funding to recruit four more officers, so we will be up to a total of 14. We did receive $2.5 million in funding for a new building. There is a new building in the Mount Currie area. Another one is being built in the Líl'wat area.
We do not have cells. We utilize the RCMP cells when we arrest someone and bring them before a JP to attend court. Our travel police territory is 2.2 million hectares—that is 8,494 square miles or 22,000 kilometres. That is how big our territorial jurisdiction is. It is huge. We actually did an experiment where we patrolled the area to see if we could fit that in within one of our shifts. It took one of my officers a whole eight hours to go from one end of the territory to the other. And that's not stopping to go to the washroom, to eat, or anything like that. That is just driving through and being that body that the people see from here up, the police officer with no legs, if you will.