A trip from Prince Rupert to Terrace for a berry festival took an unsettling turn for a woman and her friend along Yellowhead Highway 16 in northern B.C.
Symbia Barnaby said it happened around 5:30 p.m. close to the Shames Mountain entrance on July 23.
“We had just come back from cultural duties,” Barnaby said. “We had a tea with hereditary chiefs in Prince Rupert. We saw two police cars on the road … there wasn’t anybody in the middle of the road directing traffic, and I said to my friend ‘what do I do?’ and he said, ‘we’ll voluntarily stop and then we’ll ask what we should do.’”
An officer directed them to pull over.
The complaints are a concern for Vancouver-based lawyer Kyla Lee, who has a large TikTok following for her legal advice, specifically on impaired driving.
Lee said it’s the kind of scenario she warned lawmakers about when they were debating toughening up the country’s impaired driving law in 2018, because drunk or drugged driving is the leading cause of death and injury in Canada.
“I even gave the example in my testimony at the House of Commons of police parking outside the entrance to a (First Nations) reserve and testing people coming and going,” she told APTN.
“If an officer is disproportionately using these powers against Indigenous people that is a problem.”
Lee viewed Lincoln’s video at the request of APTN.
“So far it looks like a routine traffic stop for sobriety,” she said. “Police do have the power to [do] random stops of any vehicle on the roadway to check sobriety. The questions he asked are screening questions because what he asked about can interfere with tests.
“Police have also since 2018 had to power to do random breathalyzers without grounds.”
