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The Regina Police Service (RPS) didn’t meet the professional standards of a sudden death investigation when its members investigated the death of Nadine Machiskinic in January 2015.
That’s according to a report prepared by the RCMP — requested by the RPS — into the police service’s practices as it worked to solve the death of the 29-year-old Indigenous woman.
She died at the General Hospital after she was found near the bottom of a laundry chute at the Delta Hotel on Jan. 10, 2015.
Regina police released the RCMP report to the public Thursday afternoon. The police service did so, because “it would be fair and equitable to make the entire review public, but first obtained permission from the RCMP,” it said in a news release; the report’s release was originally requested through a freedom of information filing.
“The reviewers do not support the sudden death investigation of Nadine Machiskinic as meeting the standards of a professional, sudden death investigation,” the report states. “This finding is the direct result of the absence of a Command Triangle and an effective Case Management system to manage the investigation.”
The RCMP reviewers acknowledge that some “Major Case Management principles were demonstrated,” but “Accountability Mechanisms were also deemed to be lacking and seen as detrimental to the investigation.”
However, the reviewers did acknowledge the skill and dedication of the investigators, saying hindsight provides a level of clarity not available when the investigation is ongoing.
“I remain confident that, despite the acknowledged delays in this case, it was thoroughly investigated,” Regina police chief Evan Bray said in an emailed news release with the report.
“Our investigation showed no evidence that someone was criminally responsible for the death of Ms. Nadine Machiskinic. None of the recommendations in this review would have changed the outcome of our investigation.”
Regina police weren’t notified of Machiskinic’s death until 60 hours after she was found at the Delta Hotel.
The report makes 14 recommendations that it says the RPS should implement so to improve best practices in sudden death investigations.
Bray said many of the recommendations are already in place at the police service, though he didn’t specify which ones.
Among the 14 recommendations, the RCMP reviewers suggest that the RPS: establish clear, defined roles for the leaders of an investigation; keep regular logs of decisions made and rationale for those decisions; hold regular meetings with investigative team members; create formal task lists of who’s doing what in an investigation; update senior management of serious developments; process, secure and (when necessary) guard a suspected crime scene as early as possible; and obtain all medical records related to Machiskinic’s treatment at the General Hospital.
The move to release the 22-page RCMP report reversed a decision made four months earlier.
The RPS investigated and determined no one was criminally responsible for Machiskinic’s death. A coroner’s inquest followed and ultimately ruled the cause of her death was undetermined.
That finding prompted Bray to ask the RCMP to review the RPS’s investigation in July of 2017.