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Saskatoon police delete Wikipedia content about police brutality

CBC News reports (March 31) that someone using a Saskatoon police computer blanked information on the infamous "starlight tours" from the article on the Saskatoon Police Service. The "starlight tours" involved "police taking aboriginal men and women to the edge of the city in the winter and abandoning them". The practice has been linked to several deaths; a report published in 2004 after a government inquiry advocated adding aboriginal officers to the force.

The deletions (e.g. [1], [2], [3]) were spotted by university student Addison Herman:

The deletion came to light when Herman started to research the Saskatoon police as part of a history class.

He went to the Wikipedia page on the Saskatoon Police Service.

"I noticed there was no section on the starlight tours. So I looked in the article history and there was an IP address that took it off the page," he said in an interview.

"I looked at the info for the registration on the IP address, and that IP address pretty much is registered to Saskatoon Police Service, which means that a computer from their office went on Wikipedia and took it off."

And it happened more than once. The section was deleted, added back and then deleted again between 2012 and 2013.

A Saskatoon police spokeswoman confirmed deletions were made from one of their computers, but said it would be impossible to identify the person who made the edits, as server logs are only kept for 30 days. The story has also been picked up by CTV News.


















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