Last week's death of a Carmacks man in police custody, which spurred an internal RCMP investigation and coroner's inquiry, spilled onto the floor of the legislature Tuesday.

Raymond Silverfox died last Tuesday while under arrest for allegedly disturbing the peace and public drunkenness.

NDP MLA John Edzerza, speaking during question period, voiced his concern that "we are witnessing systematic prejudice by the RCMP whenever they arrest intoxicated people of first nation ancestry."

Premier Dennis Fentie quickly rose to call a point of order.

"We're now on the floor of this legislature, accusing the RCMP of systematic racism," he charged. "This is uncalled for; this is an outrage."

It is an outrage, Edzerza agreed in an interview later in the day, but not in the way Fentie is claiming.

The MLA for McIntyre-Takhini draws from years of personal and professional experience when he says the RCMP deal with intoxicated first nations people simply as a nuisance. It is that kind of attitude, he said, which leads to people being thrown into the holding cells when they need medical treatment.

When dealing with desperately addicted people, Edzerza said, the police must realize it is their responsibility to assess and deliver the necessary assistance.

"You get so used to being sick," he said of being chronically drunk or high, "that you don't know when you are actually sick. That feeling becomes normal."

This means there is an added onus on the police to care for dangerously drunk people, he said.

Edzerza points to the four people who have died in police custody over the past 10 years. All were first nation people, and most were picked up for public drunkeness.

But in the case of Silverfox, friends, family and staff at the Salvation Army shelter all say he was not a regular drinker, making his death in the drunk tank all the more tragic.

Adding to the tragedy, Edzerza said, is the fact that after every in-custody death, there has been an inquiry; every inquiry has resulted in a list of what he regards as toothless recommendations.

Neither the coroner nor the jurors who make the recommendations have any power to enforce their advice. So it is up to the parties they address to take it or leave it.

The last Yukoner to die while in police custody was Madeleine Henry. Three years after her death, a coroner's jury made five recommendations addressed to the various agencies that Henry came into contact with in the hours before she died.

The first, directed to the Department of Health and Social Services, Alcohol and Drug Services, Whitehorse General Hospital and the RCMP; advised those agencies to look at how the City of Anchorage deals with chronic cases of public intoxication through its SAFE City project.

The program includes an outreach van that responds to reports of public drunkeness and a Sobering Centre. People who have nowhere else to go spend up to 12 hours at the centre, where an emergency medical technician is on hand 24 hours a day.

"We have a lot of frequent fliers," said spokeswoman Molly Cullom.

The program was developed, said Anchorage's emergency services co-ordinator Mark Lessard, because the city recognized that sending people to jail for the night was not solving the problem, nor was it addressing the related health and safety issues.

The trip to Anchorage was made, and on return, the RCMP released a report.

"It was obvious from the tour that the creation and maintenance of partnerships was paramount in the success of the SAFE city program," the report reads.

This conclusion would appear to lead naturally to the jury's final recommendation: that the above-mentioned agencies, along with the Salvation Army, form a committee "to develop a co-operative continuum of care and/or prevention for individuals and families affected by alcohol and/or other substances."

"The coroner's jury made careful consideration of the circumstances of the situation surrounding Madeleine Henry's death," Salvation Army Capt. Robert Sessford said Tuesday, "and they made careful recommendations that would still be beneficial."

Some preliminary work was done to create such a group, but was abandoned before anything concrete was achieved.

"As I understand, there was already a number of committees in place," said RCMP spokeman Roger Lockwood, adding the Whitehorse hospital took the lead on implementing the recommendation.

According to hospital spokeswoman Val Pike, the order to drop the file came from former hospital CEO Ron Browne. He ruled it was "not the hospital's mandate to take care of these marginalized people.

"Whose desk that falls on is out of the realm of the hospital," she said.

Edzerza puts the responsibility firmly on the shoulders of Justice Minister Marian Horne.

"The justice minister has to take the bull by the horns and enforce recommendations from coroners' inquiries," he said, "because it does cast a dark shadow over the RCMP, and they don't need that."

In response to Edzerza's charge of systematic discrimination by the RCMP when dealing with intoxicated first nations people, Horne said; "The RCMP is aware of the cultural practices of the first nations in the Yukon. They take it very seriously. We have our proposed northern justice department going in at Yukon College which will help further the education of RCMP."

She made no mention of enforcing recommendations past or future.

"There are meetings ongoing, and we don't really have anything for you at this time," RCMP spokesman Sgt. Mark Groves said in response to a request for comment from the police.