Kenora City Hall

1 Main St. South
Kenora ON P9N 3X2

and

Ontario Provincial Police
615 James St. South
2nd Floor
Thunder Bay ON P7E 6P6

To whom it may concern,

I am writing to you with regards to the brutality shown Neecha (Theresa) Dupuis by Kenora police officers, and the charges of mischief facing Marla Brown, Assam Shahzad Ahmad, Rocio Valasquez, Julie Anna Lachance, Carman Teeple Hopkins, Richard Crawford, and Geri Gray following the blockade of the Trans-Canada Highway on the 13th of July, 2006, for the protection of Anishnabe traditional forest.

Neecha accompanied Richard Crawford and Geri Gray to the Kenora police department, and while her friend was inside, Neecha wrote down the license numbers of some vehicles in the parking lot. She was confronted by six officers. There was an escalation of violence when she refused to give them the paper she had used to record the numbers. The Ontario Provincial Police were excessively aggressive. Six or seven very large OPP officers surrounded her to remove first her mother’s medicine blanket and a white eagle feather, then the Unity Flag. Neecha was subdued by six or seven officers, who used pain compliance holds. In addition, one twisted her arm and one twisted her wrist to get the Unity Flag away from her, and a third officer grabbed her by the neck and forced her head down between her legs.

The arrests made the day following the blockade were racist and targeted people of colour and Six Nations forest defenders. Please consider my letter as a formal complaint of police misconduct, and file it as such. I encourage you to continue the investigation of racist brutality shown by the OPP, which is only more oppressive due to the fact that officers at the blockade promised not to press charges relating to the protest.

Sincerely,