- Does RCMP Assistant Superintendent Darrell LaFosse think
we're all stupid?
-
- Apparently. On July 10, the Toronto Star released some
alarming information from an RCMP internal memo where LaFosse falsely
claims that the RCMP had no knowledge of the deaths of children in Indian
residential schools until recently.
-
- In reality, as early as December 13, 1995, the RCMP were
notified of murders in the United Church's Alberni residential school,
and these charges were reported in the Vancouver Sun that same month.
(see asterisk, below) But twelve years later, the Mounties are pretending
that it's all news to them.
-
- Has LaFosse somehow forgotten that the Mounties ran a
supposed "official investigation" into residential school crimes
in B.C. from 1995 to 2001, through its "Indian Residential Schools
Task Force"? And that this Task Force was provided and addressed
the evidence of dead and missing children?
-
- Suddenly, all of that history seems to have vanished.
-
-
- According to the Toronto Star article, last December
24, 2007, Assistant RCMP Commissioner Darrell LaFosse wrote an internal
briefing memo to Deputy Commissioner Tim Killam that said the RCMP "recently"
learned of allegations about "missing children" and did not
have detailed knowledge about the charges.
-
-
- The memo, approved by LaFosse, says "some deaths"
resulted from illness, but that "it is suspected by some Aboriginal
people that there were deaths that may be criminal in nature ... While
this perspective is gaining momentum among former students, it has only
recently come to the attention of the RCMP as a result of discussions
with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission."
-
- Astounding. Is Superintendent LaFosse actually trying
to make us believe that his own agency, which helped operate the residential
schools and abducted native children from their villages, "only
recently" learned about missing and dead children at these schools?
Especially when the RCMP addressed these deaths in the media throughout
1995 to 1997?
-
- Darrell LaFosse is lying. But that makes him a good candidate
for participating in the government's fraudulent "Truth and Reconciliation
Commission" (TRC), whose mandate prevents any public reference to
misconduct in a residential school, or any naming of names of perpetrators.
-
- In another internal memo to RCMP commanders, on February
20, 2008,
- LaFosse confirmed that no criminal investigation into
the schools will be conducted as a result of the TRC or the so-called
"compensation" process.
-
- In a new low, even for the RCMP, "Pinocchio"
LaFosse continues to tell lies in the same memo by claiming there are
"only sparse and vague accounts of events that would describe the
RCMP's relationship with these schools. Most of the information comes
in the form of verbal accounts from former students."
-
- Not true. The RCMP were authorized by federal laws to
act as the police arm of the residential schools, abducting children from
their homes and hunting down runaways. This information comes from government
records, not primarily from students' verbal accounts, as LaFosse claims.
-
- LaFosse and has bosses must be nervous about all those
dead native kids, to try re-writing history and subverting the truth in
such a blatant manner. And so, naturally, they're covering all their bases
by doing more than lying in public. LaFosse announced in the same memo
the creation of an RCMP "steering committee ... to deal with issues
arising out of the (TRC) hearings ... and to document the RCMP's own role
in the era ... especially if investigations involve allegations of wrongdoing
by RCMP veterans."
-
- LaFosse should have checked the TRC mandate before rushing
like that to produce his own spin on the RCMP's deep complicity in the
deaths of residential school kids. For that mandate actually prohibits
the government and church-selected TRC Commissioners from accepting any
evidence or information regarding misconduct by an individual or organization
in the schools!
-
- LaFosse knows perfectly well that the role of his agency
in crimes in the schools will be as officially whitewashed as that of
the churches themselves; and yet the growing public outcry over the missing
children, and the mounting evidence from survivors themselves, is forcing
the RCMP to address the issue, and trip all over their own lies in the
process.
-
- That's all good. It's what happens to criminal bodies
as their bloody past gets revealed. But the real question remains: when
and how will a genuine, independent inquiry into the death and disappearance
of residential school children be launched in Canada - and by whom?
-
- July 11, 2008
-
- * Note: RCMP officials were quoted in most of the following
articles concerning the allegations of deaths and disappearances:
-
- Murders Alleged at residential school by Stewart Bell,
Vancouver Sun, December 13, 1995
-
- Claim of Murder Goes back to '40's by Karen Gram, Vancouver
Sun, December 18, 1995
-
- Beaten to death for theft of a prune by Mark Hume, Vancouver
Sun, December 20, 1995
-
- Gatherers mark school's grim litany of death by Suzanne
Fournier, The Province, June 4, 1996
-
- Police told of death at residential school by Dirk Meissner,
Victoria Times-
- Colonist, September 24, 1997
- ---
- Reach Kevin at------------ hiddenfromhistory@yahoo.ca
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