A Heiltsuk man and his granddaughter are asking British Columbia’s police complaint commissioner to reopen discipline proceedings against two Vancouver police officers who wrongfully handcuffed them in 2019.
Maxwell Johnson and his then 12-year-old granddaughter were detained outside a Bank of Montreal branch in downtown Vancouver in December 2019 after staff called police due to suspicions over their government-issued Indian status cards.
The handcuffing prompted immediate criticism of the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) and its treatment of Indigenous people. It led to a human rights settlement with police and a formal cultural apology ceremony in the Heiltsuk Nation in October 2022 — which was attended by senior
