Seven years after the Oka Crisis, three officers of the Surete du Quebec were found guilty of using excessive force in the arrest of Ronald “Lasagna” Cross of Kahnawake.
As the protesters emerged from behind the barricades at Oka, police grabbed Cross and took him to a tent where they severely beat him, said the Quebec Police Ethics Committee.
The committee said officer André Turcottee was “clearly abusive, excessive and wrong.”
Later, two other agents escorted Cross in a police vehicle to SQ headquarters in Montreal. The committee said that once in the car, officer Lucien Landry turned and hit Cross. Landry is one of the four officers charged with planting evidence on a suspected drug dealer in the so-called Matticks Affair. (Landry was acquitted.)
But the ethics committee did not accept all of Cross’s allegations. It dismissed his claim that he was beaten for an hour during the trip to Montreal and later on in SQ headquarters. He said he was hit on the head, ears and along his torso, and once in Montreal received blows to his side, stomach, back and genitals.
