"I see Nothing! I know Nothing"!:
The RCMP Cover Up Murder, Once Again
by Kevin D. Annett
Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared
Does 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, an Assistant Superintendent, 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
Kevin D. Annett
260 Kennedy St.
Nanaimo, BC V9R 2H8
250–753–3345 / 1–888–265–1007 www.hiddenfromhistory.org
