Difficulty of landfill search for remains no excuse to sit idle

Opinion

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This article was published 09/12/2022 (649 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“It began fast, and it also ended fast. They make us happy, and then break another promise, and then we’re right back to where we were. We don’t have our loved ones and we’re still searching for our loved ones. It’s hard to accept your loved one being in the dump like trash. Our women are not trash.”

— Winnipeg resident Sue Caribou, whose missing niece was the subject of a search in a Winnipeg landfill in 2010

“I should not have to stand here today, and I should not have to come here and be so mad and beg and beg so that you will find our loved ones and bring them home.”

— Cambria Harris, daughter of Morgan Harris

The grief and turmoil unfolding over the past week out of the city of Winnipeg has been both difficult to watch, and impossible to ignore.

Winnipeg police recently charged 35-year-old Jeremy Skibicki with three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran, along with an unidentified person who is known as Buffalo Woman.

Skibicki was already in police custody since mid-May on homicide charges, following an investigation in the death of 24-year-old Rebecca Contois, whose remains were discovered in a garbage can near an apartment building in Winnipeg.

As reported, investigators believe Morgan Harris was killed on May 1, and Marcedes Myran three days later. Police say the unidentified woman was likely killed around March 15. Thus far, no bodies have been found, though it’s believed those of Harris and Myran were left in a privately operated landfill.

But if the deaths of four Indigenous women at the hands of an alleged serial killer with white supremacist sympathies is not egregious enough, distraught families and friends of the four victims were then struck with the news that Winnipeg police had decided against searching for their bodies, citing the dangerous nature of such a search for officers.

That decision has prompted a week of anger and anguish from Indigenous people across Manitoba and Canada, as well as a call for the resignation of Winnipeg’s police chief for his refusal to act. It has also further strained relations between law enforcement and Indigenous people.

“We can’t help but wonder if the Winnipeg police would have continued to look for Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran if they had been white,” said Carol McBride, president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada, in a written statement this week.

There is no question the department’s handling of the situation has been terrible, causing damage to its reputation. Instead of taking the lead in trying to find an alternative solution, the police chief dismissed such a search as unfeasible.

Like it or not, this situation has far-reaching implications for Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities throughout the province and the country.

Brandon is certainly not immune from experiencing a similar set of circumstances, and our city’s ongoing commitment to reconciliation with Indigenous people should guide our understanding of the errors made this week by police leadership and elected officials.

Yet embarking upon such a search is not an impossible task — rather a highly difficult and dangerous one for which police are likely ill-equipped. Thankfully, the door has not yet closed on such a search.

On Friday, Coun. Markus Chambers, chair of Winnipeg’s police board, told CBC that officials were attempting to consult with industry experts, “whether it’s forensic anthropologists, whether it’s waste management experts, whether it’s excavating experts,” as a means to conduct what he called a meaningful search. But a search of the landfill would go beyond the expertise of the Winnipeg Police Service, he said.

Considering the four-acre landfill has been compacted with 9,000 tonnes of wet clay to a depth of about 12 metres, there’s little doubt outside experts would need to be called in.

That should have been considered from the outset. Even with such expertise, there is no guarantee of a successful recovery of the bodies, and certainly no easy closure for the families of these women. But that does not absolve our police and elected officials from a responsibility to act.

After all, where there’s a will, there’s a way.

» Matt Goerzen, editor