Chief says ‘there’s hardly any policing presence’ in Gamètì

The chief of Gamètì says police presence in the community has gone down in recent months, creating problems in the absence of a permanent detachment.

Chief Doreen Arrowmaker told Cabin Radio 80 calls were received in March this year, up from 40 the same month in 2025.

Leaders in the fly-in Tłı̨chǫ community of roughly 300 people have long advocated for a local RCMP detachment. Officers currently travel in from other communities, but Arrowmaker said those visits have become less frequent.

The chief said Gamètì’s council has meetings at least once a month, usually with an RCMP officer in attendance. According to her, there had been no officer present to conduct briefings for five months until a meeting last week, when she said “it just so happened that the police were here.”

“There’s a lot more incidents in the community that weren’t being dealt with,” she said.

“It’s just been a little frustrating dealing with the policing in the community because … it seems like there’s hardly any policing presence.”

Approached for comment, RCMP said a spokesperson would not be available until next week.

Arrowmaker said officers’ stated reasons for not travelling to the community as often include being too busy, family commitments, staffing pressures, scheduling challenges, funding constraints and, in some cases, concerns about overtime pay.

Concerns were also raised about limited proactive policing during the winter road season, she said, when access to the community increases.

Although the winter road opened on February 3, she said patrols and check stops were scarce and typically carried out during daytime hours, when fewer people are travelling.

“I’ve been regularly on that winter road and I haven’t been check-stopped or anything like that because there’s hardly any. When they do have check stops or patrols, it’s regular business hours between 9am and 5pm. People hardly travel during those times, they travel at night,” she said.

“Prior to, I think, last year we’ve had regular policing presence in the community – almost on a weekly basis if not every two weeks. When we did get services there was strong presence, back, like a year ago, and that’s not what we see now here in our community.”

Arrowmaker said she asked councillors at their last meeting whether they had been stopped on the winter road. Only one of the six had been check-stopped once all season.

During a March hand games tournament, which brought an influx of visitors to the community, Arrowmaker said increased drinking and other incidents could have been prevented with a police presence ahead of the event.

When reporting incidents through dispatch, the chief added that people are asked for personal information such as their full name and date of birth, which makes some community members uncomfortable and is often a reason they choose not to file a report.

Arrowmaker encourages residents to report incidents to police when they occur, saying fewer reports can create the impression there is less need for policing in the community.

That gap in reporting can ultimately impact community safety, the chief said.

Concerns ‘falling on deaf ears’

Arrowmaker recalled an incident last year when she was contacted by police in the early morning hours about a domestic disturbance. “I thought if I don’t [go] then something might happen, right?” she said.

When she arrived, she saw two people fighting outside. From her vehicle, she tried to intervene verbally and later discovered one of the individuals had thrown a machete into a nearby snowbank.

She said the incident led her to stop responding to such calls, adding that both she and the community’s senior administrative officer have at times been asked by police to check on incidents themselves.

The community is now exploring infrastructure plans that could include space for a small RCMP detachment and holding cells.

Arrowmaker said it has been difficult to engage with senior RCMP officials about the issue.

“The community needs a really good policing presence with regular patrols. If they do all of these things, they’re going to build trust through regular communication with the community members and policing, respecting the traditions and the cultures of our people,” she said.

“We expressed how much we need policing and it seems like it’s falling on deaf ears.

“How many different ways are we going to go and talk to all these different agencies about how we can have a detachment in our community?”