A respected Lake Babine First Nation elder, a 69-year-old mother of six, says an RCMP officer in Burns Lake, B.C., handcuffed her, put her in the rear of his car and gave him a ticket for littering.

Irene Alec said that on Nov. 8, while waiting for her daughter in downtown Burns Lake, she saw a bag on the ground.

“There was a green bag in front of a vehicle. I just picked it up and put it on the other side so someone could see it, because if I hadn’t moved it, someone could have crushed it,” Alec told APTN News.

Alec said an RCMP vehicle then pulled up alongside her and the officer asked her if she was littering.

She said she replied: “No, I didn’t, I just picked up that bag, didn’t look at it and moved it for someone to see and recover.”

Alec said she crossed the street and the officer got out of his vehicle and grabbed her arm, put her hands behind her back and handcuffed her.

“He said, ‘I’ll charge you for the trash,'” Alec said. “I said, ‘I didn’t do anything, it wasn’t my trash.’ The cop told me, ‘When you pick up trash, it’s your trash.’

“I felt embarrassed. I felt so small because a lot of people were passing by and seeing me and I’ve never been stopped by a cop in my life, I have a clean record, it just shook me,” she said. she added.

She alleged the officer then placed her in the back of his squad car for about 15 minutes and ticketed her $115 for littering.

“He said if you threw that ticket away you’d get another charge,” Alec added.

Alec said that when she was released, she went straight to the local courthouse down the street to tell staff what had just happened.

“My whole body was shaking and the court assistant was telling me to breathe. I was really upset. I always collect trash and bottles. I’m just trying to keep Canada clean, is this what I’m getting? Alec said.

Shortly after the incident, Shannon Alec, Irene’s daughter, made a TikTok video of Irene explaining the interaction she had with the RCMP officer. Since then, the post has been viewed more than 136,000 times.

“When my family and friends saw the video on social media, everyone was so upset, everyone knows my mother. She is prepared to receive a hereditary chief name, she is a wonderful person, she teaches our language, she teaches beading, she feeds people on the street, gives them clothes and rescues animals,” Shannon said.

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Babine First Nation is adjacent to Burns Lake and located in central British Columbia.

Irene said she is a day school survivor who attended the former Immaculata Day School in Burns Lake.

To add to Irene’s stress, the family said an RCMP vehicle was parked outside her home for a half-hour after the incident.

“She closed all the curtains, she locked all the doors, they didn’t come to the house and say anything to her, they just sat outside her house. She was too scared to go see if it was the same officer. She was home alone, she was just terrified,” Shannon added.

“After posting that TikTok video, I received so many messages from other people in the community telling me that the same RCMP officer had stopped them and roughed them up too and that he needed to be stopped,” Shannon said.

Shannon said she didn’t understand why the officer behaved that way toward her mother when he had been so helpful in a missing person’s case earlier this summer.

“He was so kind, so respectful, he was so caring and very compassionate and wonderful when this young girl went missing. I was just shocked that he would behave like that,” Shannon said.

The Alec family has since met with the Burns Lake RCMP detachment and has been told that the incident, including the ticket issued to Irene, is under review.

According to the family, Lake Babine Nation leaders also spoke with the detachment and shared their concerns.

“I would just like an official apology from the RCMP and my mother just wants to be heard,” Shannon said.

After the first incident and a police vehicle outside her house, Alec said she left home to escape the stress and be safe with her family at a potlach.

According to a press release from RCMP, “Detachment leadership has been engaged and apologized for how this interaction affected them. A full review is underway and until that review is complete, it would be premature to conclude exactly what happened during the interaction and whether any corrective action is necessary.