3 ms·

Saskatoon freezing deaths

81 points by luu 3y ago

jimbob45 3y ago
I only see four confirmed cases and one fabrication. Is that really the entire confirmed scope of this? The way Reddit talks about it, it was thousands.
- cwillu 3y ago
  How many executions do you think is appropriate for a police service to perform?
- TaylorAlexander 3y ago
  Well I wouldn’t be surprised if Reddit commenters didn’t have all the facts, but certainly four cases is horrific and far too many. This absolutely never should have happened, and one wonders, if we have four confirmed cases, were there additional unknown cases? And how else did the Saskatoon police treat indigenous people? Why did other police stand for such behavior? There’s plenty of questions to ask if you consider for a moment the implications of police murdering people at will. Edit: The “Censorship attempts” section of the Wikipedia page is informative as well, and shows that someone inside the police department attempted to delete mention of these events on a Wikipedia page about the police force. We might ask: do they have a habit of erasing information related to their crimes?
  - jimbob45 3y ago
    I can’t base my world view around guesswork like this. Four confirmed cases is four confirmed cases and that’s that. It’s just like how people see ten murders by blacks on the news and assume all blacks are murderers. No, that’s just ten black murders and nothing more.
- asah 3y ago
  I'm gonna guess that the true number was a lot higher, simply because it became a meme. That said, the Salem witch trials were only a couple dozen people: https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+people+died+in+salem+witch+trials https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+people+died+in+sale... versus the larger genocides and cleansings of the Nazis, Cultural Revolution, etc. If it were orders of magnitude higher, I suspect there'd be more direct evidence in the record, including names.
- Zpalmtree 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
anonymous_union 3y ago
native racism in the prairie provinces has been awful. in alberta indigenous population appx 7% but inmate population appx 50%. saskatchewan and manitoba likely similar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Alberta#Visible_minorities_and_Indigenous_peoples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Alberta#Visibl... https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/0238e596-4add-46ee-81eb-2dbfa13062be/resource/2a02240a-389b-40a1-92be-41db907cea42/download/average-adult-inmate-population-indigenous-status-centre-2016-2017.pdf https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/0238e596-4add-46ee-81eb-2dbf...
- ahupp 3y ago
  That stat alone doesn't tell us if the disparity is due to different rates if criminal behavior, or different treatment by the system. A useful check is to look at murder victimization rates, since a) murder is almost always reported, and b) most murders are intra-racial. The doc you linked says 39% of inmates are First Nations, and this[0] says they are 37% of Alberta murder victims. Of course this isn't saying that there isn't inequality in the system, but just that happens before someone gets sentenced. [0] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3510015601&pickMembers%5B0%5D=1.10&pickMembers%5B1%5D=2.1&cubeTimeFrame.startYear=2018&cubeTimeFrame.endYear=2022&referencePeriods=20180101%2C20220101 https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=351001...
  - cbsmith 3y ago
    Worth keeping in mind that even a lot of these cases weren't treated as murder...
  - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
    We could further ask why racialized minorities might have higher crime rates, such as how those people have been treated by society and the state.
    - rayiner 3y ago
      But that’s unrelated to the “racism” comment above. European Canadians came and destroyed the indigenous Canadian population, scattered their population and upended their societies. But Canadians today might treat indigenous people without any prejudice. Generally speaking, crime isn’t a matter of economics. My dad’s village in Bangladesh in the 1950s—when 1/4 of kids died before the age of five—was safer then than Toronto is today.
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
kingspact 3y ago
[flagged]

81 points by luu 3y ago

I only see four confirmed cases and one fabrication. Is that really the entire confirmed scope of this? The way Reddit talks about it, it was thousands.

cwillu 3y ago
How many executions do you think is appropriate for a police service to perform?
TaylorAlexander 3y ago
Well I wouldn’t be surprised if Reddit commenters didn’t have all the facts, but certainly four cases is horrific and far too many. This absolutely never should have happened, and one wonders, if we have four confirmed cases, were there additional unknown cases? And how else did the Saskatoon police treat indigenous people? Why did other police stand for such behavior? There’s plenty of questions to ask if you consider for a moment the implications of police murdering people at will. Edit: The “Censorship attempts” section of the Wikipedia page is informative as well, and shows that someone inside the police department attempted to delete mention of these events on a Wikipedia page about the police force. We might ask: do they have a habit of erasing information related to their crimes?
- jimbob45 3y ago
  I can’t base my world view around guesswork like this. Four confirmed cases is four confirmed cases and that’s that. It’s just like how people see ten murders by blacks on the news and assume all blacks are murderers. No, that’s just ten black murders and nothing more.
asah 3y ago
I'm gonna guess that the true number was a lot higher, simply because it became a meme. That said, the Salem witch trials were only a couple dozen people: https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+people+died+in+salem+witch+trials https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+people+died+in+sale... versus the larger genocides and cleansings of the Nazis, Cultural Revolution, etc. If it were orders of magnitude higher, I suspect there'd be more direct evidence in the record, including names.
Zpalmtree 3y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

anonymous_union 3y ago

native racism in the prairie provinces has been awful. in alberta indigenous population appx 7% but inmate population appx 50%. saskatchewan and manitoba likely similar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Alberta#Visible_minorities_and_Indigenous_peoples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Alberta#Visibl... https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/0238e596-4add-46ee-81eb-2dbfa13062be/resource/2a02240a-389b-40a1-92be-41db907cea42/download/average-adult-inmate-population-indigenous-status-centre-2016-2017.pdf https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/0238e596-4add-46ee-81eb-2dbf...

ahupp 3y ago
That stat alone doesn't tell us if the disparity is due to different rates if criminal behavior, or different treatment by the system. A useful check is to look at murder victimization rates, since a) murder is almost always reported, and b) most murders are intra-racial. The doc you linked says 39% of inmates are First Nations, and this[0] says they are 37% of Alberta murder victims. Of course this isn't saying that there isn't inequality in the system, but just that happens before someone gets sentenced. [0] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3510015601&pickMembers%5B0%5D=1.10&pickMembers%5B1%5D=2.1&cubeTimeFrame.startYear=2018&cubeTimeFrame.endYear=2022&referencePeriods=20180101%2C20220101 https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=351001...
- cbsmith 3y ago
  Worth keeping in mind that even a lot of these cases weren't treated as murder...
- TaylorAlexander 3y ago
  We could further ask why racialized minorities might have higher crime rates, such as how those people have been treated by society and the state.
  - rayiner 3y ago
    But that’s unrelated to the “racism” comment above. European Canadians came and destroyed the indigenous Canadian population, scattered their population and upended their societies. But Canadians today might treat indigenous people without any prejudice. Generally speaking, crime isn’t a matter of economics. My dad’s village in Bangladesh in the 1950s—when 1/4 of kids died before the age of five—was safer then than Toronto is today.

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]

kingspact 3y ago

[flagged]