By Tiar Wilson
APTN National News
WINNIPEG–A 20 year-old First Nations man says he was taken on a starlight tour by Winnipeg police who dumped him on the outskirts of the city and told him to run or else he would be Tasered.
Evan Maud said he was walking home from visiting his brother at 4 a.m. this past Friday when an unmarked black police car pulled up beside him.
Maud said there were two officers in the car, one with a bullet proof vest and the other wearing a police jacket.
Maud, who is in the midst of finishing Grade 12, said the officers accused him of being involved in break and enters and car theft, before taking him on a trip to the city’s edge.
Maud, who claimed to only have had a couple drinks that night, said the officers drove him to the outskirt of the city where they took his jacket and sweater and gave him another sweater before telling him to run or he would be Tasered.
“I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know what to do,” said Maud.
He said the experience left him so shaken he would now never walk alone at night.
“I just don’t want this to happen to anyone else,” he said. “You got to walk with at least two or three people.”
The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs said they planned to hold an emergency meeting with Maud’s family to discuss the incident.
A recent study found that Winnipeg police had dumped at least 76 people on roads and highways outside the city on starlight tours.
The University of Winnipeg study found that police targeted young Aboriginal men.
Starlight tours, where police take individuals to the outskirts of the city to sober up, can have deadly consequences.
In 1990, Neil Stonechild was found frozen to death outside Saskatoon after he was taken on a starlight tour.
Two police officers were eventually convicted of unlawful confinement and sentenced to eight months in jail.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Evan Maud’s allegations have been proven false and he has publicly apologized to the Winnipeg police service.
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