First Nations policing has been seriously neglected for years despite several government-led initiatives aimed at providing the support necessary for these services to deliver quality and effective policing to the communities they serve.

What do you know about First Nations policing in Ontario? Probably very little.

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The Ontario government is currently reviewing and rewriting the Police Services Act with plans to incorporate a First Nations policing framework. First Nations policing was originally created as a "program" rather than a "service" to enhance the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP). However, several First Nations police forces are fully autonomous but are not considered "services" by the government.

The Ontario government must recognize First Nations police as essential services and bring them under the same legislative framework as other police services in the province.

In 1991, the federal government created the First Nations Policing Policy (FNPP) with the purpose of contributing to the improvement of public safety for Aboriginal peoples through effective and quality law enforcement service delivery.

The FNPP is administered through tripartite agreements between the federal, provincial/territorial governments, and communities. Self-administered Agreements (SA) are the most common in Ontario, whereby the local community delivers policing services with financial support from both the federal and provincial/territorial governments (52 per cent federal and 48 per cent provincial/territorial).

These services continue to suffer from inadequate government support and are grossly underfunded, which jeopardizes the quality of policing.

In Ontario, there are nine self-administered First Nations police services, and several other services that are administered and supported by the OPP. The OPP administers funding and support to these small agencies through the Ontario First Nations Policing Agreement. The nine stand-alone First Nations services receive funding from the federal and provincial government. Despite this, these services continue to suffer from inadequate government support and are grossly underfunded, which jeopardizes the quality of policing delivered to these communities.

There are several cases that illustrate the lack of support for First Nations police. For example, the Nishnawbe Aski Police Service (NAPS), which is the largest First Nations police service in Canada, threatened to disband if the force was not brought under the same legislative framework as other individual police services in Ontario. The service does not have the funding support required to deal adequately and effectively with the 35 communities they serve. This is most notable in 2013 when a First Nations woman committed suicide in the back of a police truck because the community did not have any holding cells. In another incident, two First Nations men burned to death when they were being held in a building that failed to meet the fire code.