Const. Chris Nguyen checks out abandoned vehicle. |
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Keeping the peace
on the Reserve
By Terry Jorden
Behind his black wrap-a-round sunglasses, Const. Chris Nguyen steers his police cruiser down Highway 2 near Standoff. It’s a sunny Friday afternoon and he’s heading to Cardston, a Mormon community just outside the Blood Tribe Indian reserve in southwestern Alberta.
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Chief Alf Rudd heads the Blood Tribe First Nations Police Service. This spring a new five year policing agreement was signed between the Blood and the provincial and federal governments allowing the police to increase its members from 19 to 31. For some time the Blood Police laboured under a heavy case load, about 250 cases a year per officer. The increased manpower should bring it more in line with other police services of similar size, about 125 Criminal Code cases per officer. |
On the seat beside him is a file he wants to deliver to a RCMP constable who will need it for court. Const. Nguyen finds the RCMP constable biting into a hamburger in a local restaurant, where several other police officers are having lunch.
The file concerns the case of a Blood Tribe man, who assaulted his common-law wife while visiting her in Saskatoon. Police in that city notified the Blood Tribe police when they learned that he was likely driving back to Standoff and he could be armed.
Const. Nguyen got a description of the vehicle, located a photo of the suspect, and began to watch for him. Shortly afterwards he spotted the vehicle in Standoff, contacted his supervisor, and arrested the suspect without incident. It turned out he had a lengthy criminal record including several outstanding warrants.
The file he handed over to the RCMP would brief the member assigned to attend court when the suspect appears on Monday.
On the drive back to the reserve, we stop in Moses Lake, a community of about a dozen mostly identical homes, separated by broken fences and old cars. This community, one of several townsites within the 1,300-square kilometer reserve, is known to police to be a place of solvent sniffing, feuding families and violent assaults.
On this afternoon a middle-aged woman called police to complain about her brother who was threatening violence. The dispute involved an unpaid $50 bill for a pay-per-view wrestling program. The brother became upset when his sister suggested he pay a portion of the bill for the program he had ordered.
Without any clear evidence that a crime had been committed, we leave and continue back to Standoff.
Among the police service's 19 members, Const. Nguyen is not typical. Many of his colleagues are First Nations, some speak Blackfoot. Chris, however, was born in Hong Kong to Vietnamese parents and came to Canada as a baby where he was raised in Lethbridge.
Although he always wanted to go into policing, in the event he didn't make it, he completed an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) program at SAIT. After graduating as an EMT he was accepted by the Blood Tribe police, trained at the RCMP training academy in Regina, and began active police work in July 2000.
Since then, like the rest of the Blood Tribe Police, he has been busy moving from one incident to another. During his second shift on the job, for example, he responded to a murder complaint.
Rolling down Farm Four Road, we pick up Jim Riseatthedoor who is heading to Standoff to begin his shift at the detachment's lock-up. But before we can go much further, a dusty older-model Ford is spotted abandoned at the side of the road. Jim figures it has been sitting there for three or four days.
A call into dispatch reveals that the licence plates were stolen several months ago from a Lethbridge man. The car's registered owner can't be reached, so a tow-truck is called.
Moving again, we pass a large warehouse on the horizon -- Kainai Industries. It's now used for several band offices, but in its prime it employed many local people to build houses for the community.
Economically, the reserve is full of contradictions. Some reserve members live in well-kept homes, on large plots of land, some of it leased to non-native farmers or oil and gas companies. The band council under Chief Chris Shade has received government money to build new schools, a fire hall, an administrative building, a community college and a growing professional police service. There are health and recreation facilities and the community may soon gain control over its child welfare services. At the north end of the reserve, sits the St. Mary Reservoir, a successful irrigation project built in the 1990s.
But for others, life on the reserve means living in crowded rundown townsites, plagued with social problems and crime.
As we pass the elementary school in Laverne, with its windows covered by steel shutters, Chris thinks about the area's youth, who make up a growing majority of the people.
The Blood Tribe Police make regular visits to the local schools to encourage the youth to pursue their dreams, but it's not easy. “They just don't know about life beyond the reserve,” he said. “They don't know what they can go after.”
“When I started working here I was a little naive or overly optimistic. Now I know that change takes time and that the problems at the Blood Reserve were here before I arrived and will be here after I am gone. What's important to me is that I try to make a little difference every day.”
