No criminal actions by Nunavik police in woman’s death, report finds

There’s no evidence that Nunavik Police Service officers committed any criminal actions in the May 2023 death of a woman in custody in Inukjuak, Quebec’s Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions said in a report released Monday.

It said that decision was reached following an investigation by the Bureau of Independent Investigations, Quebec’s police watchdog.

The prosecutions office said in Monday’s news release that on May 25, 2023, at around 7 p.m., police received reports of an intoxicated woman knocking on doors at residences in Inukjuak.

Two officers from the Sûreté du Québec, the province’s provincial police, arrested the woman for breaking a municipal bylaw. She was found staggering and had difficulty speaking, and was brought to the police station.

The officers saw the woman, in the back of the police car, drinking from a bottle of alcohol, and stopped her. She showed obvious signs of intoxication and her mouth hung open, although she was still coherent when speaking.

At the police station, officers searched her and put her in a cell, then left to respond to another call.

The prosecutors’ report said that about an hour later, around 8:30 p.m., another woman had been arrested and put into the same cell as the first woman, who by then was lying on her side and sleeping.

An hour later, the night guard was twice asked by the second detainee for a glass of water. The first time, he noticed the sleeping woman was breathing. At 10:07 p.m.., the guard was notified by the second inmate that the sleeping woman was unresponsive and would not wake up.

The guard checked on her and she appeared to have stopped breathing.

He alerted the two Nunavik Police Service officers at the station, who found the woman did not have a pulse and did not respond when her name was called out. Officers tried to resuscitate her, and medical first responders were called.

According to one officer’s body camera, the defibrillator at the station was not charged and the provincial police officers were called for backup, followed soon after by medical personnel.

When moving the woman, one officer found a partially full bottle of alcohol in the woman’s pants.

Medical responders took her to the Inukjuak medical clinic at about 10:26 p.m. and she was pronounced dead at 10:40 p.m.

The news release said a toxicology report revealed the woman had a high concentration of alcohol in her blood, with a presence of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, a cannibinoid. The coroner declared she had died of an acute ethanol intoxication.

The prosecutors’ office said although police officers have an obligation to protect vulnerable individuals under their custody, “the officers did not demonstrate a marked departure from what a reasonably prudent officer would have done in the same circumstances.”