Nunavik Police Service aims to reinvent itself with funding increase
$562 million, split over five years, will allow service to improve community policing, says chief
Nunavik Police Chief Jean-PIerre Larose deems a new funding agreement to be historic, saying it will help him and his team reinvent policing in Nunavik. (Photo by Cedric Gallant)
The Nunavik Police Service hopes to reinvent the way it serves the region after receiving a five-fold increase in its funding through an agreement between Kativik Regional Government and the Quebec and federal governments.
The deal provides Nunavik police with $562 million to carry out its operations, spread over a five-year period from 2024 to 2029. That dwarfs the previous agreement, signed in 2018 and in effect until 2023, which totalled $115 million.
“Historical,” is how police Chief Jean-Pierre Larose described April’s renewal of the Agreement on the Provision of Policing Services in the Kativik Region, during a French interview at his Kuujjuaq office on Wednesday.
“We have the means for our ambitions now,” he said.
He said the funding increase is due to a detailed five-year plan Nunavik police presented to Quebec’s public security ministry, which wants to reform the Nunavik Police Service and turn its focus to community policing.
Over the past seven months, two people have died during incidents involving Nunavik police officers: Joshua Papigatuk, of Salluit, in November, and another man in Kangiqsualujjuaq in May.
Both cases are being investigated by Quebec’s police public watchdog, the Bureau des enquêtes indépendantes.
“It is about growing closer and gaining the trust of Inuit by any means possible,” Larose said of community policing, adding he’s open to suggestions from people in the Nunavik communities.
“That would be perfect, because I admit that I am starting to run out of ideas myself,” he said. “I need the population to help us as well.”
One significant upgrade will be a jump to 32 investigators for the service’s mixed investigation team, which tackles drug smuggling and contraband. That’s twice the current number of investigators.
The Hudson and Ungava coast areas will each now have teams of 16 investigators, to improve efficiency and capacity throughout the region.
Larose also wants to incorporate lieutenants — ideally, one in every village — to ensure the growing number of officers coming into the region are well structured and supervised.
By 2029, he said, Nunavik Police Service will have over 250 officers compared to the 150 working now.
“I want them to be on the road, supervise the calls, supervise police officers during their interventions,” he said of the lieutenants, who will be picked from the current pool of Nunavik officers.
Larose said the roughly 65 new officers who arrived within the past year and a half average 27 or 28 years in age and may lack experience.
“I am fully aware of that, so it is even more important to have a system of coaching and supervision in place,” he said.
Relaunching the cadet program to recruit Inuit youth who would accompany officers during their outreach work, is also a priority for Larose.
He believes that — alongside a more rigorous cultural introduction program to prepare incoming officers — will improve communication between the communities and the police.
Larose wants incoming officers to spend days with community members to experience Inuit life and make stronger connections.
All officers will also take a communication tactics course in de-escalating incidents, to help them defuse situations especially when mental health issues are involved.
The funding increase will also allow Nunavik police to explore using alternative non-lethal weapons.
Larose points out that in both recent cases where a police altercation ended in the death of a civilian, the conducted energy weapon, also known as a stun gun, was ineffective.
“This makes me question, it tells me that we should use other options where in some situations a rubber projectile weapon could be more beneficial,” he said.
Paint guns, laser tag guns and whistles for $112.4M per year budget. Minus the lawsuits that could peak over $110M for the past 6 months. It is well known that bodycam footage fails in the cold environments from investigations from the RCMP in Nunavut and NWT. Two communities are in deep misery, and chief talking about more escalated conflicts 🤑
1/2 BILLION OVER 5 YRS , TO POLICE , A POPULATION OF 14, 000 PEOPLE , WOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Half a billion, imagine what that could do like where is bean bags guns for NPS? Which can possibly reduce/slow down police involved shootings!!!
“I am fully aware of that(lacking age and experience), so it is even more important to have a system of coaching and supervision in place,” he said.
Acts as if misconduct is a new thing and only done by the green.
Sorry, Chief. With your experience, I’d think you know better.
With half a billion $$ for the next five years, I think we can we get someone to replace this guy already
Ive been saying they can use non-lethal, but they wanna use lethal guns, plus they shoot body’s, atleast not on arm or leg, straight to body/death, when someone is using gun/shoot inside village, atleast they could just shoot on leg, but they paranoid easily…. i said that since 2017 when my cousin died from paranoid coop
Mr Larose hasn’t searched much about better ways of ensuring the safety of Indigenous communities. In the West (from Yukon), there’s a much better way to deal with safety in the communities: the Community Safety Officer program.
He can do an internet search (in English) and will find a program that works to defuse situations and has significantly decreased violent confrontations with police, interventions and criminal charges. More of the same policing is likely to cause more of the same issues. A complete change of approach needs to be done if governments are serious about improving the safety of the communities.
If a police shoots and kills a Nunavik resident, are they remaining to police in Nunavik? Is there and procedures or arrangements made for the shooter in this case. I understand if police are found guilty, they been gone, I know. But what about if police are in the right, do they remain on the force in Nunavik? Anyone shine light on this , just say .
Would a doctor lose their job, if trying to save someone and they perished? (No)
Would a transport truck driver who hits a car while not at fault (the car drives into them ) killing someone lose their job? (No)
Now for the drumroll.. would a police officer, anywhere in Canada lose their job for shooting someone as part of their duties and not at fault? (No)
Police have pensions, worked/studied for years in this province for their jobs and have a job where part of their duties they may have to protect themselves or others with lethal force.
You can’t compare a medical intervention and a traffic accident to the magnitude of a police shooting. You just cannot. A police shooting is an interactive laced with an act of violence and judgement, or lack of judgment in an heated moment. You know that. Plus the question is not about nothing more or less about the specific case of a police remaining in the Nunavik population, working as a police , or even not working as a police, like having a wife or girlfriend from the area, you may know what I mean. After being in such a horrific tragedy, how do a police from not in the area remain in the area, whether te shooting was justified or not. Think about what I’m saying. It for discussion, not for side slip , misunderstanding individual to try to answer, it’s a complicated, but straightforward topic,
Sure, you can compare, as it is as simple as that a work-related death. Just like the Dr I referenced or the transport truck driver, or the nurse at the clinic (happens all the time in the north!)
You are simply being emotional and incapable of disassociating racialized judgement (against typically non-Inuit police). Remember there are some police up here that are Inuit.
For instance, lets do a thought experiment, suddenly it’s one of the few Inuit police that shoots and kills in a justified (they did nothing legally wrong), does your view suddenly change? Are they allowed to work their pension and feed their family? Do you plan on paying out their 30 year career, for shooting someone ? Also a crazy idea if that is what you are to sugest
Also consider my thought experiment I gave you to a large marco level, Nunavik has like 5 murders a year (not police at all), for 14k people. No one. I mean no one even comments concern or care, why is that?
The brutal matter is, police, who have done nothing wrong for doing their job should not lose their ability to feed their familys, pay their mortgage and continue doing the job they have spent years to train for because of doing their duties. It is full stop asinine.
Imagine being months from completing a pension and not defending oneself or others because of fear of people like you firing them for protecting themselves. I cannot believe we are having this conversation, it is honestly totally void of common sense from your perspective.
@ Edward Snowden
“Police have .. worked/studied for years in this province for their jobs….”
Not this province, not the NPS……..
Actually all police in Quebec require 3 years of college followed by 6 months of the police academy. You can think whatever you want , but yes that is the case.
First I heard of it , 3 years in college, what courses do they take, and when did this start ? They must be learning how to avoid getting caught doing nothing, and when they do something, it’s like going to arrest someone in a tent at night, in the dark. Can someone verify what this person wrote that police training includes 3 years in college, and what the course load, diploma ?
True wikileaks. Low intelligence for many of them too, no emotional intelligence at all. Nunavik and anywhere else will need to keep standing up to these wannabes. We not getting best in Nunavik. They dont send cream of the crop here. Must be difficult for a police who gets involved with an young Inuk woman, and gets into trouble, and makes her pregnant, like if that happen, and the police gets into trouble some contravene situation, just saying.
What about ratings of professional services. A rating can be obtained for a doctor, can one be obtained for a police? Or is there a secret for police that would exclude work history. A doctor even one who makes a mistake, not an intended malpractice is known, by at least family members to be able to make a rating on that doctor, based on their own interpretation of the service, what about a police that shoots someone, right wrong or indifferent, can the information be accessed for a rating of that police?
This is Nunavik’s future for a police that shoots a local: and this is as it most likely will be, not what should be , big difference. What should be: the police should , according to the laws and civil righteousness go on living and working in Nunavik, but what most likely will be: the police will not be welcome to remain in Nunavik in any capacity, my opinion. Small population will spillover any secret that’s kept from the population in this respect.
It would not be easy to live in a small population after shooting someone in the police patrol. Even if the police are doing their job. Not an easy one. Everyone knows each other, and even if a transfer to another Nunavik community, people will probably be aware, and not welcoming to such. Already people are not welcoming police, imagine the reception of welcome being extended to a police shooter of a local suspect. I think the training should address that , as indicate a lifelong broken relationship between the individual police , the police force and the population. Even when police are within all legal rights, it’s a very li
Fe long situation that will haunt people and the police. So police force in Nunavik need to consider that , it’s fact . Big cities you are not known, big difference.
Special conditions language, race, cultural divisions collide. Use of lethal force in said conditions can be contained. Sidearms are not helping when carried on the person I say, keep them in the cruiser trunk to be accessed readily quickly if circumstances go bad. We need not adopt rules automatically from other regions of the country. Speak up and changes will come.
You need not too, but oxymoronic you need too,,,, look south of the border. The whole of Canada should be steadfast in observing the cluttered state of policing . The brave and the free have fallen into submission, and question if it can happen to us as well. The first place affected if that was to be will be the indigenous communities. Our rights and freedoms if left unchecked will be forced away using tyranny and brutality of the police culture. It’s about time we start being strict about who’s hired into our areas. Police and otherwise. The police has many vulnerable links along its hiring practices, whereby as psychological research as shown , many borderline personality and narcissistic individuals find it easy to entering into their desire to hurt people through the police departments, with similar potential as been seen in perpetrated priest have entered their profession to get close to children. These police wannabes do the same in its stead towards violence of the vulnerable in society. My studies have covered these issues well in university specialities courses, and I also worked in these sensitive situations. I see some concern in Nunavik as I’ve been in a position to at least observe, and it’s cautiously more concerning today. We need to stand up , and keep this potential in the air. This should go for all persons coming into our small vulnerable communities, and keep eyes on all of them. Make it mandatory, that the police candidate not only answer to chief of police, who is he any way? Make it mandatory to answer to a committee we need to set up in Nunavik for Nunavik. This screening will help keep us safer and drug dealers as well as police wannabe will be capped into control.