A Thunder Bay police officer responsible for an investigation into the 2015 death of Stacy DeBungee has irreparably damaged the reputation of the city’s police service and deserves to be terminated in order to deter anti-Indigenous racism within the force, a lawyer representing Mr. DeBungee’s family argued Wednesday.
“Dismissal is the only appropriate penalty,” Asha James, a lawyer with Falconers LLP, told a Police Services Act hearing in Thunder Bay. The purpose of the proceeding is to decide on a penalty for the officer, Staff Sergeant Shawn Harrison, who in a disciplinary hearing this past July was found guilty of neglect of duty and discreditable conduct in connection with his handling of Mr. DeBungee’s death.
Ms. James’s clients are Brad DeBungee, who is Stacy’s brother, and Jim Leonard, a former chief of Rainy River First Nation, where the DeBungee family is from. Both men testified at the hearing on Monday, weary and frustrated with the lengthy process.
“If Staff Sgt. Harrison remains on the force for the Thunder Bay Police Service, it will be seen by the community, by the public complainants, as more of the status quo,” Ms. James told the hearing.
She added that the nature and seriousness of Staff Sgt. Harrison’s misconduct is more than enough to merit his termination from the service, and that there has been no indication he will be reformed or rehabilitated.
In the July disciplinary verdict, hearing officer Greg Walton said that Staff Sgt. Harrison, who was the lead investigator on Mr. DeBungee’s case, failed to treat the death equally to other cases. Mr. Walton found that the officer had discriminated against the 41-year-old Indigenous man because of unconscious racial bias.
Mr. DeBungee’s body was found in the McIntyre River on Oct. 15, 2015. The disciplinary hearing revealed that Staff Sgt. Harrison quickly determined, after little investigation, that Mr. DeBungee was likely intoxicated, and that he had passed out, rolled into the water and drowned.
In July, Staff Sgt. Harrison pleaded guilty to neglect of duty for failing to meet with a private investigator hired by the DeBungee family. He pleaded not guilty to the discreditable conduct charge.
Ms. James argued on Wednesday that Staff Sgt. Harrison showed a self-serving attitude during the proceedings by misleading the hearing on the status of cases he presented as evidence of his exemplary work on other investigations involving Indigenous people. She said two of the 40 cases cited by the defence were among nine investigations flagged for reinvestigation by the province in a 2018 report on the Thunder Bay Police Service’s failures in handling the deaths of Indigenous people.
She said it was offensive that Staff Sgt. Harrison and his lawyer, David Butt, had suggested a healing circle prior to the July hearing. A healing circle is a form of restorative justice used by Indigenous groups.
“He has never apologized. He has shown no remorse. He has shown no self-reflection,” Ms. James said.
Mr. Butt admitted he had proposed a healing circle to the prosecution before the proceedings started. “Obviously it didn’t go anywhere, because here we are,” he told the hearing on Wednesday.
Ms. James told the hearing removing Staff Sgt. Harrison from the police force would deter other officers from engaging in anti-Indigenous discrimination. She said this would be in the public interest, and that the potential harm to Staff Sgt. Harrison and his family shouldn’t outweigh the harm he had caused, and its affect on the community.
“The findings that you made in your decision regarding the willful inaction of Staff Sgt. Harrison, the woeful inadequacy of the investigation and the fact that it was based on stereotypes and anti-Indigenous racism – how can that officer remain on the force? How can that community have confidence in that policing?” she told Mr. Walton, who is also presiding over this week’s hearing.
On Tuesday, Mr. Butt told the hearing that Staff Sgt. Harrison shouldn’t be made a scapegoat for systemic racism in the Thunder Bay Police Service. Ms. James said on Wednesday that the officer’s actions were independent of, and in addition to, systemic issues.
“That the Thunder Bay Police Service management has failed to adequately address systemic racism within the service does not diminish the need for specific deterrence by this tribunal,” she said.
“I cannot begin to understand how it could be unrealistic that people would expect that a senior officer with the Thunder Bay Police Service would conduct a proper fulsome and adequate death investigation that was not based on racist stereotypes. That was not unrealistic in 2015, it wasn’t unrealistic in 2018, and it’s not unrealistic in 2022.”
Mr. Walton said he will release his written decision on Staff Sgt. Harrison’s penalty in the new year.