A 23-year-old aboriginal woman has died in the back of a police cruiser, where she was being held because the local detachment in her remote northern community had no heat.

Lena Anderson died of a suspected suicide Feb. 1 in Kasabonika Lake First Nation, an Ontario community about 500 kilometres north of Sioux Lookout.

A coroner’s inquest will be held at a future date and the jury will make an official determination of her death.

The Nishnawbe-Aski Police Service, which polices Kasabonika as well as 33 other reserves, had recently moved into the new detachment, but construction wasn’t complete and the heat hadn’t been turned on.

The station was rebuilt after the Kashechewan inquest, which recommended more federal and provincial funding for northern detachments in 2009 after two men burned to death in custody three years earlier. Police tried desperately to unlock the cells but couldn’t get the men out in time.

Since then, 10 detachments have been rebuilt, and another four are incomplete after three years of construction. Seven have yet to be replaced.

“The cells in those detachments wouldn’t meet the provincial adequacy standards,” says Nishnawbe-Aski acting police chief Robert Herman, a veteran officer and former Thunder Bay police chief. “The doors are the old style doors that go back 40 years where you have ligatures on the door — places where people can tie things to.”

The chief said he couldn’t comment on Anderson’s death even though the Ontario Provincial Police investigated and decided no charges would be laid. “I don’t feel comfortable commenting on that because it’s before lawyers right now,” said Herman.”

The police chief did say that suicide is a risk factor in the northern community. “Absolutely. We have a lot of people that we hold in custody for intoxication, drug abuse,” he said. “Often we don’t have people in the communities that can guard these people. It’s unacceptable.”

The young woman’s death highlights more than just the chronic underfunding of the First Nations policing program, which provides enforcement for reserves across the country, said Alvin Fiddler, deputy grand chief of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation.

“Our position is this tragic incident points to a bigger problem,” he said. “We're calling on Ontario and Canada to treat this as a much bigger issue. It’s not so much a policing issue as a public safety issue.”

On Wednesday, Fiddler visited the devastated community with the regional coroner and the OPP.

Funding for the native police program has been static since a three-year agreement began in 2009 with the provincial and federal governments. Last year, the agreement was given a one-year extension and no new funding. That agreement is up next month.

“We’re six weeks away from the one year extension on the tri-party agreement between Nishnawbe and the federal and provincial governments. We’ve heard nothing,” said Herman. “We have no idea how we’re going to be funded for the next year which makes it very difficult to do budgeting and to consider deployment and all those things.”

The federal government’s $400 million Police Officers Recruitment Fund, which was launched in 2009 to allow forces across Canada to hire officers, is also coming to an end. Nishnawbe-Aski police used the $1.2 million it received to hire 11 officers, whose jobs are now in jeopardy.

Madeleine Meilleur, provincial minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services, said in an email she was aware of funding concerns after meeting in November with eight chiefs of First Nations police services.

Meilleur said she wrote a letter to Vic Toews, Minister of Public Safety Canada, right away asking to meet to resolve the situation. A response to that letter, as well as one sent later by her deputy minister and another by her chief-of-staff, was never received.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Officers work alone and sometimes for 20 hour shifts. Back up can be hours or days away, said Herman. Police cars aren’t equipped with radios that connect to a central communications centre, which means there’s no way to monitor their health and safety or allow them to contact anyone outside of the community for help, he said. “And that is a significant concern to us.”

“We are currently exploring ways to find the most effective and sustainable policing models to support these communities.”