A week before his 19th birthday, Johnny Saunders fulfilled his childhood dream of becoming a police officer — but it didn’t play out how he had hoped.
Saunders was given a fresh uniform and the keys to a truck, he said, recalling the moment he joined Nunavik Regional Police, which was called the Kativik Regional Police Force at the time.
“We were all naive, but I guess we all had a dream of trying to make a difference,” Saunders said in an interview.
He was part of several Inuit officers recruited and trained for policing jobs in their hometowns in the early 2000s.
But two and a half years later, by the time he was 21, Saunders was losing hope, “taking stress leave after stress leave,” and drinking heavily to cope.
He also felt like he was being viewed as an outsider in his own community in Nunavik, an Inuit territory in northern Quebec.
In some cases, his time as a police officer altered his relationships with loved ones — like when he was forced to arrest his cousin for a minor offence.
It’s something he still regrets.
“I looked into his eyes and I told him I have to,” said Saunders.
“Putting your cousins in handcuffs that you grew up with, you know how unnecessary it is, but the law states that you must do what you must do.”
Feeling overwhelmed and unsupported by the police, Saunders quit his job. And he wasn’t the only one.
There’s been a decline in the number of local police officers on staff.
With more non-Indigenous officers, Saunders says Nunavik has become a rotating training ground for police and is “always dealing with the new guy” who don’t always fully understand the people they’re serving.
Advocates say that has contributed, over time, to an erosion of trust in communities and an increase in violent interventions.
According to data from the provincial police watchdog, police officers in Nunavik are involved in 73 times more fatal shootings than the provincial average.
Earlier this week, residents in communities across Nunavik took part in marches to denounce police brutality.
Some residents say they continue to feel concerned about safety a year after police fatally shot 26-year-old Joshua Papigatuk and injured his twin brother — in an incident that made headlines across the province.
Another former police officer who joined the region’s police force in 1999 says the way forward needs to include recruiting more Inuit and focusing on community policing models.
CBC News has agreed to withhold his name because he fears he could face consequences for speaking out against the police.
He says there was a lack of support for Inuit officers and working in communities long term was unsustainable.
“In hindsight, it was the most difficult thing in my life, policing your own community,” he said.
“Many of us who were recruited then are no longer here.”
Some former colleagues passed away and others continue to struggle with the effects of trauma they endured while being an officer, he says.
“The force has not improved — it’s worsened,” he said. “We are not served by our people. We are served by people from the south, who have no regard for our culture, our way of life.”
Police also face challenges in Nunavik. In 2024, crime rates in the region were roughly 15 times higher than the rest of the province, according to Statistics Canada. There is also heavy struggles with addiction and suicide, compounded by intergenerational trauma and a lack of housing.
The regional police acknowledged in a recent report that recruitment and retention was “an enormous and constant challenge.”
In 2005, eight Inuit officers worked with local police, according to a Kativik Regional Government (KRG) report.
Two decades later, in 2025, that number dropped to three Inuit officers out of 151 serving the region.
In June, the KRG passed a resolution requesting an audit of the Nunavik Police Service. The resolution called for a review of police operations and ways to make policing better reflect Inuit culture.
Police chief Jean-Pierre Larose has said he is in full support of such a review. He has also spoken out about the lack of resources for the Nunavik Police Service. Larose also said recently he would like his officers to get more involved in the community and he said he wants to “have a better relationship and build better trust.”
KRG did not return a request for comment to CBC News for this story.
In an emailed statement, Rémy Charest, a spokesperson with Quebec’s Public Security Ministry said it will be available to support, advise and facilitate the implementation of the results of the police audit.
Charest said police officers must complete two training courses offered by Université Laval on Inuit culture and Indigenous realities.
“Maintaining good relations with the community is the foundation of a community policing model,” Charest said.
Some residents are asking for police officers to no longer carry lethal service firearms in the field.
It’s one of the demands listed in an online petition co-signed by the families of two men killed in police-involved shootings in the region this year.
Their lawyer, Louis-Nicolas Coupal says the families requested to meet with Premier François Legault but the government has “straight up failed to reply.”
Nor have the families heard from Ian Lafrenière, public security minister and minister responsible for relations with First Nations and Inuit.
“The killings need to stop,” said Coupal. “The province of Quebec has failed to deliver proper policing and judicial services to Nunavik for many years now.”
He says immediate reforms are needed and suggests the implementation of non-lethal weapons.
Handguns were slowly introduced in the region in the late 90s, and the weapons at the police’s disposal got more powerful, according to a report prepared for Public Safety Canada.
In Saunders’s two-and-a-half years as an officer, he says he never put a hand on his weapon. He says he used de-escalation tactics.
Responding to calls heavily armed with rifles or assault weapons is not the right tool to de-escalate, says Olivia Ikey, an advocate who helped organize the Nov. 4 protest against police brutality.
“We understand that there [are] guns needed,” she said, then added: “But at what cost? How do we manage that?”
She made the jump from her hometown of Kuujjuaq to Montreal six years ago with her family.
Ikey says it’s becoming dangerous and Inuit are “terrified of the police officers.”
“We cannot call police officers when we need help. We know things will escalate even worse when we call,” she said.
Suzy Kauki, who lives in Kuujjuaq, says her family experienced this firsthand in 2020.
Kauki says that, during a police operation in response to another girl who was in crisis, officers pointed guns at her 11-year-old daughter, Harmony.
“She was held on our house balcony with her hands up in the air and with police officers pointing their semi-automatic weapons at her,” said Kauki.
It’s an example, she says, of just how the policing model falls short.
Kauki has long been involved in police reform and advocacy within the justice system in Nunavik and was another one of the organizers of the remembrance march against police brutality.
Kauki doesn’t always remember it being this way with the police.
Moving back to Nunavik with her three daughters after pursuing her studies in Ottawa, Kauki said she noticed a major disconnect between police and the communities they serve.
“As a mother, do I want this to be happening to my daughters or do I want this to be happening to my granddaughters? Is this the kind of environment that we’re going to raise our children [in]?”
People don’t make time for each other anymore, says Saunders, comparing how policing approaches have changed since his time on the force.
“People don’t interact, people don’t look into each other’s eyes,” he said.
Saunders has also found himself on the other end of policing — arrested in 2014 after he became violent, he says.
“There was not enough support for what we were going through,” he said.
“The things that we got to see — you weren’t necessarily prepared for that.”
Saunders, now a musician, uses his guitar as his way to find healing from his experiences and not “allow shame to hold me back.”
