Responding to missing person reports and violence

Once Sergeant Haddad classified Tara Pelletier's disappearance as high risk at 14:50 on Saturday, February 7, the Port Ardent Police Service moved quickly. By 15:05, Detective Carla Whitlock of the major crime unit had been assigned as the lead investigator. By 15:10, Tara's details were entered in the Canadian Police Information Centre as a missing person. By 15:20, Haddad had phoned Sergeant Keeshig at Nimkii Bay, who sent an officer to check Tara's mother's and grandmother's houses. And by 15:30, Constable Grace Morin had been assigned as the family's liaison officer and was sitting with Danielle in a quiet interview room, explaining what would happen next.

Desjardins walks the class through the next two days, step by step. 'This file went well,' he says. 'Not because anyone did anything brilliant, but because once the risk was recognized, people did the basic things, in the right order, quickly, and told the family what they were doing. That's what the families who spoke to the inquiries asked for. It isn't complicated. It's just not always done.'

The first hours

Good practice in a high-risk missing person case starts with a few things that must happen at once. The report is taken in full, without waiting periods, and the person is entered in national databases so that any officer who encounters them will know. A supervisor reviews the risk. A lead investigator is named. Places the person may be are checked: home, family, friends, hospitals, shelters and holding cells. The last known movements are reconstructed from witnesses, phone and financial records and video. Evidence that may disappear, such as video that is overwritten after a few days, is preserved. And the family is given one named contact, who will keep them informed.

Ontario's Missing Persons Act, 2018, which came into force in July 2019, gives police tools for cases in which there is no evidence of a crime. Police may apply to a justice for an order to obtain records, such as phone, banking or travel records, or for a search order to enter premises, and in urgent cases, where they believe the delay of applying for an order could cause harm or loss of evidence, they may make an urgent written demand for records. Before the Act, police often had no legal way to get such records unless they could show grounds to believe a crime had been committed. In Tara's case, Whitlock used an urgent demand at 16:10 to get the location history of Tara's phone from her carrier.

At the house, two officers spoke with Ryan Coulter at 15:40. He repeated that Tara had left after an argument on Thursday night and said he did not know where she was. He declined to let the officers look inside without a warrant, which was his right. The officers noticed a broken lamp in the hallway and a small dark stain on the carpet that could have been anything, and they wrote down exactly what they saw and what he said. They did not argue with him or accuse him. Whitlock later said their notes were among the most useful pieces of evidence in the file, because they recorded his account before he knew what the police already knew.

At 18:15, the bus terminal video changed the direction of the case. It showed Tara, alone, in a hooded coat, buying a ticket with cash at 23:52 on Thursday and boarding a bus to Toronto at 00:10. The image was clear enough to show bruising on the side of her neck. Whitlock now had a strong reason to believe Tara had left on her own, very likely fleeing violence, and a strong reason to fear for her if Coulter found her first. The investigation shifted from searching for a person who might be in danger anywhere to finding a person who was probably safe somewhere, and who might not want to be found by everyone.

Families, liaison and culture

The families who spoke to the inquiries asked for the same things again and again: to be believed, to be told what was being done, to have one person to call, to be treated with respect and to have their knowledge used. Morin's role as liaison officer was to provide exactly that. She gave Danielle her direct number, called her with an update every few hours, explained honestly what the police could and could not share, and asked what the family knew that the police might not. Danielle told her about friends of Tara's that no one else had mentioned and about a women's shelter Tara had once said she would go to in Toronto if she ever needed to.

Morin also asked Danielle whether the family wanted cultural support. Danielle asked for Elder Marion Shawanda to be with her, and Morin arranged for the elder to sit in on the updates. The service's Indigenous liaison officer and an Indigenous victim services worker from the Port Ardent Indigenous Justice Centre also joined the family. Desjardins stresses that these supports are offered, not imposed. Some Indigenous families want an elder or a cultural support worker present; others do not, or have their own people; some want a support worker from outside the community because news travels fast at home. The rule is the same as in Lesson 1: ask, listen and offer choices.

By Saturday evening, the Nimkii Bay community had organized its own search: volunteers walking the roads around the reserve, a Facebook group with two thousand members and a phone tree. Haddad and Keeshig agreed that Keeshig would liaise with the volunteers, share what could be shared, and make sure that any information they found reached Whitlock. Haddad says that community searches can help or harm an investigation, depending on whether police work with them. 'If you ignore them, they'll do it without you, and you'll miss things,' she says. 'If you work with them, you get a hundred extra pairs of eyes and a family that trusts you.'

Shelters, privacy and the right to be found safe

Women's shelters protect the confidentiality of the people who stay in them, because the people looking for a woman may include the person she has fled. Shelters generally will not confirm whether a particular person is staying with them. Whitlock knew this, and on Saturday night she contacted the coordinator of the provincial network of violence against women shelters and asked her to circulate a message to shelters in Toronto and nearby: police were concerned for Tara's safety, did not need to know her location, and asked only that any shelter where she might be staying let her know that police and her sister wanted to confirm she was safe, and give her Whitlock's number.

On Sunday morning, after discussing it with Danielle and the elder, the service issued a public appeal with Tara's photograph, describing her as a missing woman the police wanted to confirm was safe, without mentioning partner violence. On Monday, February 9, at 11:20, a shelter worker called Whitlock: Tara had seen the appeal, was safe and was willing to speak to police by video, with a shelter advocate present. At 13:00, Tara spoke with Whitlock and Morin for forty minutes. She told them that on Thursday night Coulter had choked her against the hallway wall during an argument and smashed the lamp, that she had waited until he fell asleep and then walked to the bus terminal, and that she did not want him to know where she was.

Desjardins says the next decisions are where respect for an adult's choices matters most. Tara was an adult who had left on her own; she was entitled to privacy about where she was. The police told Danielle that Tara had been found safe and was well, and passed on a message from Tara, but did not tell anyone, including her family, where she was. The public appeal was withdrawn with a statement that she had been found safe, and CPIC was updated. Tara decided, after talking with the shelter advocate, that she wanted Coulter charged.

On Tuesday, February 10, Coulter was arrested for assault by choking under section 267(c) of the Criminal Code, which since 2019 has specifically covered assault in which the offender chokes, suffocates or strangles the complainant, and for mischief. He was released on an undertaking with conditions not to contact Tara or go anywhere she lives or works. Whitlock arranged for Tara to be connected with victim services and with the Victim/Witness Assistance Program for the court process, and for Danielle to get the support she needed. Strangulation is one of the strongest known predictors that an abuser will later kill a partner, which is why both countries have made it a specific offence and why risk assessment tools ask about it.

Responding to violence: what victims need

Many Indigenous victims of violence never report it, for reasons that include distrust of police, fear of the offender, fear that children will be taken, the closeness of small communities and past experiences of not being believed. When they do report, the quality of the first response shapes whether they will ever report again. Trauma-informed practice, which officers learn in other courses, applies with particular force: give the person control where possible, explain each step, allow a support person, avoid repeated retelling, and be patient with inconsistencies that trauma often causes. Indigenous victim services, which exist in many communities and cities, can offer culturally grounded support, and the Ontario government funds programs specifically for Indigenous victims.

Where an offence occurs in a First Nations community, the local police service will usually lead, and Port Ardent officers should be ready to support it with specialized resources such as forensic identification, technological crime and major case management. Ontario's major case management system requires that certain serious cases, including homicides, sexual assaults and missing persons cases where foul play is suspected, be managed under provincial standards, whichever service investigates.