The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have killed yet another First Nations man. Canada’s national police force violates rights with impunity. In any other country, it would be rightly accused of being the arm of state violence. This force’s main function is systemic racism against Indigenous peoples. It includes numerous killings, beatings, and other forms of violence.

The RCMP was created to “pacify” First Nations on the prairies, based on the model of Britain’s colonial police in Ireland.

The RCMP killed a Mik’maq man, Rodney Levi, on June 12. They managed to take down the white man who embarked on Canada’s largest ever mass killing this year alive. But they shot Rodney Levi.

This comes a week after the police killing of another First Nations woman in New Brunswick, Chantel Moore. She was shot as local police (not the RCMP, in this case) carried out a “wellness check” on her.

Six Indigenous people in Canada have died from the pandemic. Nine have been killed by police.

RCMP officers in Fort McMurray recently carried out a violent beating of Athabasca Chipewyan chief Allan Adam.

The RCMP’s human rights record is, in global perspective, as bad as some of the worst dictatorships. It comforts white people and makes them — us — feel protected. Despite its record, polls show high trust in the RCMP. But it is systemically racist against Indigenous people.

When Canada’s army was in Somalia in the 1990s, members of the Airnborne section beat and killed a Somali teenager, ripping aside the mask of racism. Canada’s government stalled, but was finally forced to admit that the Airborne was too racist to keep. They abolished it after enormous pressure.

It is time to abolish the RCMP, too.