Indian Ernie

When he began his career with the Saskatoon Police in 1987, Ernie Louttit was only the city's third native police officer. Indian Ernie, as he came to be known on the streets, here details an era of challenge, prejudice, and also tremendous change in urban policing. Drawing from his childhood, army career, and service as a veteran patrol officer, Louttit shares stories of criminals and victims, the night shift, avoiding politics, but most of all, the realities of the marginalized and disenfranchised.

Louttit spent his entire career (including as a Sergeant) patrolling the streets of Saskatoon's west side, an area until recently beset by poverty, and terrible social conditions. Here, he struggled to bring justice to communities where the lines between criminal and victim often blurred. Though Louttit's story is characterized by conflict, danger, and violence, he argues that empathy and love for the community you serve are the greatest tools in any officer's hands, especially when policing society's less fortunate.

While his story is based on his experiences in Saskatoon, it is equally applicable to the challenges faced in any community where marginalized people live. It is an exciting, passionate, easy to read, and highly accessible story aimed at a broad audience.



I really enjoyed this book for several reasons. 

First of all, Saskatoon being my hometown, automatically makes Louttit's book interesting to me. There is noting like learning something new about where you live. And in my case, I was raised on the east side of the city in a privileged neighborhood, and I was pretty much in a bubble. When I was in elementary and highschool, as far as I was concerned, violent crime and drugs were something that belonged in movies, not in the city I was born and raised in. Of course by the time I was hired at the Correctional Centre, I was far less naive, but I still had (and have) a lot to learn. This book is a great way to become informed about just how the crime in Saskatoon has changed over Louttit's career, and by extension, in my lifetime.

Another draw to this book was that the field of work I am in, crime in Saskatoon really interests me. It was really enlightening to see how many of the 'clients' at the Saskatoon Correctional Centre end up there. Of course, not all of them were arrested by Indian Ernie, but being assigned to the area he was, I would bet that plenty of them had been arrested by him at one time, and if they weren't, at least they may be familiar with him. Although he doesn't give any names of the offenders in the example arrests in his career, I am sure that I would know some of them if he did. I have a few guesses, but his descriptions are often relatively generic, probably so people like myself can't actually say for certain who is who.

I found this book extremely readable. Granted, he isn't always expansive with his vocabulary, but he is a very good storyteller. Early in the book he alternates back and forth from his time in the Saskatoon Police Service and his childhood and background coming into policing. It was a great way of providing a basis of knowledge about him as well as keeping us interested through the means of his many interesting arrests. Had the entire book been formatted chronologically, I think it would have been a really boring first half. Not that his life wasn't interesting when he was young, it just wasn't as action packed as it was once he got into the Police Force.

I think it would be tough for me to recommend this book to anyone that doesn't live in Saskatoon, because even just knowing the approximate locations of the communities he is talking about makes this book more interesting. But otherwise I would recommend it to everyone in Saskatoon. It's great to stay informed on everything possible in your community and city, and even my dad read this book and enjoyed it, and he's not that big of a reader. So to all my Saskatoonian readers, read up! :)