Volunteer airport searchers intercept up to $100K in drugs since May en route to Attawapiskat

Attawapiskat First Nation councillor Rosie Koostachin has been borrowing rubber gloves from the community's water plant to protect herself from drugs found on passengers and in baggage en route to her community through its airport.

Occasionally, she's had to wash the gloves off in a nearby pond before another plane arrived.

Since May, Koostachin, Attawapiskat Chief Ignace Gull and two other volunteers have intercepted up to $100,000 worth of drugs en route to the remote community in Northern Ontario. They have practically no resources and train themselves by watching videos on YouTube. 

The small group says it's hoping for more support from Canada to stem the flow of drugs and alcohol into Attawapiskat. 

"We want to save as many people as we can," Koostachin said.

"We're sacrificing ourselves for the good of our children that have yet to be born." 

Few resources, plenty of risk

The airport team, known in the community as "searchers," checks all passengers and baggage entering the community in a donated trailer near the airport's runway. 

The trailer has no running water, no equipment for handling toxic substances and more concerning, said Koostachin, no full-time protection.

"We know something will go bad, we know," she said.

"We could get assaulted; we could be stumbling into a lethal [substance]. We know that. The only thing that's helping us right now is our prayers." 

Passengers are made aware the searches are voluntary, but if they decline the search, they can be turned back to where they came from. If they're discovered to have drugs, the police are called to handle the narcotics but the travellers aren't arrested since the searches are done without a police search warrant, Koostachin said.

Terry Armstrong, chief of the Nishnawbe-Aski Police Service (NAPS) that serves Attawapiskat, said the screening operation run by the volunteers is something that's within the community's jurisdiction to do. 

"It's private property, the reserve land," he said.

"If for any reason the chief and council don't want to allow a person in to the community, there are procedures to have them removed or even banned."  

'Chronically' underfunded drug enforcement

Armstrong said NAPS, which is funded by the federal Office of the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, is doing as much as it can to assist the 35 communities it serves across Ontario.

In Attawapiskat specifically, he said, the police went so far as to obtain an x-ray machine for screening baggage at the airport but the community doesn't have the room or resources to operate it. 

"It's still available for the community when they need it," said Armstrong. 

The lack of resources is a major factor in drug enforcement in these remote communities, Armstrong said, both in the communities themselves and for the police that serve them.

"We've historically been chronically underfunded," he said.

"We lack resources for drug enforcement because we're not funded for that. We're funded for front-line policing .... Obviously if we had more people doing that work, we'd be doing more of that work."

The office of Ralph Goodale, minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, said in an emailed statement that while the ministry funds NAPS, it cannot comment on operational procedure. 

The modest volunteer operation is part of an initiative championed by Chief Gull since 2015 when community members signed a petition asking that the chief and councillors take any measures to control and fight the drug issue.

In the last two weeks alone, Gull said the team has confiscated up to $71,000 worth of drugs like speed and Percocet. 

"We're sending a message to all the drug dealers that we're not going to stop and it will be at the airport waiting for them every time they come off the plane," he said. 

Door-to-door searches in the community, carried out with NAPS officers, have also taken thousands of dollars of drugs and alcohol out of the community.

Gull said that while drug activity and related crime has been thinning out, he knows that the volunteer effort can only do so much. 

In January, Goodale announced a $291.2 million investment over five years for policing in First Nations and Inuit communities, slated to roll out this year. 

In July Gull sat down with Goodale to ask for help in the meantime, but said he was simply told to apply for funding and wait it out. 

"They have a responsibility to help the community. We can't just do it ourselves," Gull said.

"They can't just sit on the sidelines and watch what's happening up here."