Police shot and killed Chantel Moore more than a year ago. What has changed for Indigenous people and the law since then?

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Chantel Moore had been in her new apartment for less than a week when she was jarred awake by someone banging on her window at 2:30 a.m. Outside, on her narrow, unlit balcony, a man with a flashlight was standing among the moving boxes that she was still unpacking.

Ms. Moore, a 26-year-old member of the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation, had recently moved to New Brunswick from British Columbia to be closer to her then six-year-old daughter who was living with the child’s grandmother. Sleeping alone on her couch that night, Ms. Moore reportedly picked up a small steak knife from the counter and slowly opened the door. Within moments, she would be dead.

The man at her door was a constable from the Edmundston Police Force with two years of service, sent to check on her well-being. He said he fatally shot her when she didn’t respond to his commands to drop the knife, according to a summary of an investigation into the killing released on June 7 by New Brunswick’s Office of the Attorney-General.

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In the year since the tragic events of June 4, 2020, that decision has been analyzed extensively by prosecutors, Indigenous leaders and investigators who probe police shootings. The death of Ms. Moore, which came just days before the fatal RCMP shooting in New Brunswick of Rodney Levi, a member of Metepenagiag First Nation, drew national attention and sparked protests from Vancouver Island to Atlantic Canada.

Ms. Moore was one of eight Indigenous people who died after police calls in Canada between April and June last year, according to a list prepared by the Native Women’s Association of Canada and shared with The Globe and Mail.

Her death has prompted some changes to the way policing is done in New Brunswick, and fuelled calls for the establishment of an independent body to investigate police shootings. But it did not result in criminal charges against the officer who pulled the trigger. New Brunswick’s public prosecution service argued in early June that the shooting was justified because he was afraid for his life, even though the officer stood more than a foot taller than Ms. Moore and outweighed her by more than 100 pounds.

The anger over that decision was palpable in Indigenous communities in the province and in British Columbia, where Ms. Moore spent most of her life. Many were upset prosecutors ultimately blamed the fact she had been drinking that night – and not the officer – for her death.

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In the rambling cluster of downtown Edmundston apartments, where pizza-delivery cars come and go from a block dotted with vacant storefronts, there are those who say they will never accept that the shooting was justified. “How could he be afraid of her?” asks Shayne Robichaud, who lives in the apartment directly below where the shooting took place. “If someone was at my door in the middle of the night, I’d also pick up a knife. And I guess I’d be dead.”

He was awoken that night by the sound of gunshots and found Ms. Moore’s blood on his balcony the next morning. He says he still gets angry every day thinking about what happened to his neighbour.

Mr. Robichaud placed a yellow “Justice for Chantel Moore” sign in his window on the anniversary of her death, and said her family deserves more than just an apology. He’s among those calling for immediate changes to police training after Ms. Moore joined the growing list of Indigenous people who have died during police calls. “I won’t take that sign down until something happens,” said Mr. Robichaud, who is not Indigenous. “This isn’t right. This just keeps happening again and again and again, and there’s no justice.”

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A fatal police call

Edmundston is a blue-collar mill town across the river from Maine, tucked into the green mountains of northwestern New Brunswick. About 17,000 people, mostly francophone, call it home, and many work in the sawmills and paper plants that fill the air with steam and the smell of wood pulp.

On her last evening alive, Ms. Moore was picked up by some friends after her waitressing shift at Boston Pizza. According to the report released by the Office of the Attorney-General, they spent a few hours driving around town and drinking, while Ms. Moore texted with an ex-boyfriend who had recently moved to Repentigny, Que., a suburb of Montreal.

Later that night, he became increasingly concerned for her well-being after he began getting strange text messages from Ms. Moore’s phone suggesting she was being followed and watched while she slept, the report said.

At 2:06 a.m., her ex-boyfriend called 911, telling the dispatcher he was worried for her safety. At 2:30 a.m., Ms. Moore was alone in her apartment, asleep on her couch, when she was awoken by an officer, Edmundston Police Force Constable Jeremy Son, banging on her door and window. He did not identify himself verbally as a police officer, but he told investigators he shone his flashlight on himself, showing his uniform, according to statements given to Quebec’s police watchdog, the Bureau des enquêtes indépendantes (BEI), which investigated the shooting because New Brunswick doesn’t have its own police oversight agency.

Constable Son – who was not named in the report but identified by the City of Edmundston in an access-to-information request – told investigators that Ms. Moore, who stands about 5-foot-3, appeared confused after she was awoken and that she answered the door with a steak knife. He shouted at her to drop the knife – speaking in French to someone who didn’t understand the language, according to the lawyer retained by Ms. Moore’s family. When she didn’t, he shot her as she stepped onto the balcony.

He fired four times, hitting her with three bullets in the chest and one in the leg. A use-of-force instructor for the city police for two years, he was also carrying pepper spray and a baton that night, the report said. He used neither, and was not equipped with a taser.

Constable Son, placed on administrative duties while the shooting was probed, told investigators he made the mistake of turning left on her balcony, backing himself into a corner with no escape route. “He had nowhere to go as he was at the end of a third-floor balcony. Scared that she would hurt or kill him, [Constable Son] said he fired his gun until the threat was no longer present,” the official account of the shooting reads.

The Edmundston Police Force declined to comment for this story, beyond saying it would co-operate with any further investigation and acknowledging that Ms. Moore’s death has had a “profound impact” on her family, First Nations communities and the police service.

“The use of force in an intervention is not something we take lightly. Our members undergo rigorous training in order to respond to difficult circumstances,” Edmundston Chief Alain Lang said.

The force declined an interview request for Constable Son, and the municipality also declined to comment now that Ms. Moore’s family is planning to file a wrongful-death lawsuit against the officer and the city that employs him. The family’s lawyer said it would use the BEI investigation as the foundation for a civil claim.

“I’m disappointed, but I’m not surprised [about the lack of charges]. Arresting, charging and having police officers convicted is a very difficult process,” said T.J. Burke, the Fredericton lawyer leading the pending civil litigation against the officer and the City of Edmundston on behalf of Ms. Moore’s family.

Her death, less than two weeks after George Floyd, a Black man, was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis, came as more Canadians began focusing on the use of force by police against racialized people, and accusing the agencies that investigate those shootings of pro-police bias.

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Canada doesn’t have a national database for use of force and deaths at the hands of police, and police departments don’t typically collect statistics based on race or ethnicity. But numbers compiled by academic researchers, Indigenous organizations and journalists suggest Indigenous people are overrepresented in police shootings.

Mr. Burke, a former minister of justice and attorney-general in New Brunswick, said the troublingly high rate of Indigenous deaths at the hands of police needs to be more publicly scrutinized.

“These tough questions about how Aboriginal people are policed, or overpoliced, need to be addressed,” he said.

“The only way this can be addressed so people like Chantel can receive justice is by putting these tough questions to the authorities and politicians, so that they wake up and start creating laws that will be sustainable for everyone in the justice system. Until that’s done, I don’t think we will see any real change.”

He says the decision not to pursue criminal charges against the officer who killed Ms. Moore shows how systemic racism can play out in the justice system. He represented two police officers from Bathurst, N.B., charged after Michel Vienneau, a white businessman, was killed at a train station in that city after a false tip in 2015 that he was trafficking drugs. An investigation determined the shooting was justified because Mr. Vienneau tried to hit one of the undercover officers with his car, but the province’s prosecution office still pursued manslaughter charges against both officers. Those charges were eventually dismissed.

“You have to scratch your head over why those officers were prosecuted, on every potential angle for several years, while this Edmundston officer was not,” said Mr. Burke, one of the few practising Indigenous lawyers in New Brunswick.

“Some might say that’s systemic discrimination. I don’t know that’s what happened here, but I know it exists, and that’s why I wanted to take this case on. I’ve seen systemic racism throughout my entire career.”

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No public inquiry

While no criminal charges will be laid, Ms. Moore’s death will be examined by the New Brunswick Police Commission through a code of conduct complaint filed by Ms. Moore’s family. The province has also called a coroner’s inquest into her shooting, a public process set to begin in December that can make recommendations aimed at preventing similar deaths in the future.

The province’s prosecution service also declined to pursue charges against the police officers involved in the fatal shooting of Mr. Levi, saying they acted lawfully to protect themselves and civilians who were at the barbecue where he was killed. A coroner’s inquest into his death will be held in October.

Indigenous leaders in New Brunswick, meanwhile, say they were skeptical from the beginning that the BEI’s investigation into Ms. Moore’s shooting would find criminal fault in the officer’s actions.

“We were hopeful there would be some justice for these families. But the cards are always stacked against Indigenous people. We knew there was a high probability we’d get a decision that favours the police,” said Chief Ross Perley of Tobique First Nation in northwestern New Brunswick.

“But we will not let these decision-makers close the door on her murder. We will keep working to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

Mr. Perley and others say you can’t remove race from any analysis of the shooting. They see it everywhere in the case, from the officer’s decision to shoot his firearm instead of de-escalating or using less lethal options, to the lack of Indigenous investigators with the BEI, to the Crown’s decision not to pursue criminal charges.

“You have to put yourself in an Indigenous person’s moccasins,” Chief Perley said. “Would that cop have reacted the same way if this were a Caucasian francophone girl? These are questions we are asking, but we’ll probably never get the answers for.”

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Of the 45 investigators within the Quebec agency, only four identify as members of a cultural or ethnic minority and none are members of any Indigenous community. The BEI until recently employed an Indigenous liaison officer, who was sent to Edmundston to provide some cultural awareness to BEI agents in the field, the agency said.

The BEI also said it’s “very conscious of the need to have a better Indigenous representation” and intends to “hire investigators who are from Indigenous origin as soon as possible,” according to spokesperson Guy Lapointe Jr.

The BEI was slammed by a Quebec judge in June for being biased toward police in a case involving the death of a Montreal man in 2018 at the hands of four officers. In his ruling, Justice Louis Riverin said the BEI used language that defended the police, did not include the version of events recounted by family witnesses and was neither impartial nor transparent in its communications with the public.

The agency, which has been criticized because so many of its investigators are former police officers, is still analyzing the judgment and said it can’t comment further. It has so far refused to release the autopsy report or any other records connected to its investigation of Ms. Moore’s death.

One of the challenges for BEI investigators was the lack of video evidence or eye witnesses aside from the officer who shot Ms. Moore. He responded alone that night because COVID-19 protocols kept officers from riding together in the same vehicle. Neighbours who gave statements to police were awoken by the gunshots but didn’t actually see the shooting.

Several people interviewed by the BEI gave accounts that conflicted with the police version. One of Ms. Moore’s neighbours, who lives across from her unit, told investigators that officers turned her body around and believed police placed the knife at the scene – speculation that was fuelled by the lack of fingerprints on the knife recovered at the shooting, according to the report released by the Attorney-General’s office.

Mr. Burke, the lawyer, said he hasn’t seen any evidence that supports that kind of conspiracy, however. He’s more concerned with how the officer responded to the petite woman reportedly holding a knife.

“Some say don’t bring a knife to a gunfight unless you’re prepared to suffer the consequences. But there could have been a less lethal way to subdue her, had the officer been equipped to do so or wanted to do so,” he said.

The Wolastoqey Nation, which represents six First Nations in New Brunswick, called for a public inquiry into systemic racism in the province’s justice system after Ms. Moore’s and Mr. Levi’s deaths. The Progressive Conservative government of Blaine Higgs, while calling the shootings regrettable, has so far denied that request.

Chief Patricia Bernard of Madawaska Maliseet First Nation, a community just outside of Edmundston that’s home to Ms. Moore’s mother, said the province seems more interested in “sweeping the tragedy under the rug” than addressing discrimination faced by Indigenous people in policing and in the courts.

“If this government was serious about tackling this issue they would have agreed to a proper public inquiry on systemic racism in the system,” she said.

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Changes to policing

Ms. Moore’s death has already led to some changes. The Edmundston Police Force will begin equipping all officers with tasers and body cameras in the coming months. The case has also increased political calls for the creation of a police oversight body serving the three Maritime provinces – one that First Nations leaders say should have Indigenous representation.

British Columbia’s Independent Investigations Office will for the first time appoint an Indigenous civilian monitor for its investigation into the shooting death of Julian Jones, 28, a member of the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation, who was shot and killed by RCMP officers on Meares Island, B.C., in late February. Ms. Moore was from the same First Nation.

Edmundston Police Chief Lang, who’s also president of the New Brunswick Association of Chiefs of Police, says the chiefs support creating an independent New Brunswick agency. Mr. Higgs says he’s open to creating a shared, independent oversight agency with Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island but the proposal hasn’t advanced beyond talk between those provinces. Like New Brunswick, PEI uses outside agencies to investigate police shootings.

The shooting death of Ms. Moore has also prompted calls for changes to the way so-called wellness checks are performed. Ms. Moore, who had tried to harm herself before, had no history of violence against others. Indigenous leaders say police should not be responding to these kind of calls alone, and they believe sending mental-health specialists and other professionals could help save lives.

“This really sickens me. How would this have been different if a social worker responded to that call with the officer?” asked Lorraine Whitman, president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada.

Her group wants the RCMP and other Canadian police forces to help it create a task force that will “rewrite the relationship between police and Indigenous women,” and improve the way victims’ families are treated during investigations. “We cannot bring back Chantel or the other Indigenous people who have died at the end of a police gun. But we can let it be known that we will no longer be silent in the face of these horrific killings,” Ms. Whitman said.

Ms. Moore’s mother, Martha Martin, who deferred interview requests to her lawyer, recently told a crowd of demonstrators the version being put forward by police is not the full story. She’s left to care for Ms. Moore’s young daughter, while also mourning the death of her son, who died by suicide in November while inside a provincial remand centre in Surrey, B.C.

“It’s not a full story because she’s not here to defend it,” Ms. Martin said on June 8 outside the New Brunswick Legislature. “She’s not here to say her truth, and that’s where we’re going to step in and continue to keep being her voice.”

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