POT-DEALERS BLAMED FOR SHOT

Kanesatake Peacekeepers' Station Fired Upon For Second Time This Autumn

Drug-dealers are probably behind a gunshot fired at the Kanesatake police
station early Saturday - the second such shooting in less than two months -
Mohawk leaders said yesterday.

The drug-dealers cultivating marijuana in the settlement near Oka are upset
that the Mohawk peacekeepers have carried out raids on their homes, Grand
Chief James Gabriel suggested.

"It's continuing intimidation by the criminal element," he told The Gazette.

"I can only assume that it's people who are unhappy with the police for
executing search warrants.

"These drug-dealers are a menace to our community," Gabriel added. "If this
keeps up, it's only a matter of time before somebody gets shot."

At around 1:30 a.m. Saturday, a single shot was fired through a window into
an investigator's office in back of the peackeepers' station. No one was in
the office at the time.

"It's crazy, what's going on," said peacekeeper Marven Condo. "The officers
here worry about this."

Soon after the station was fired at in late September, the 10 Kanesatake
peacekeepers sought assistance from aboriginal police forces across Quebec.
There are now up to two dozen peacekeepers patrolling the dirt roads of
Kanesatake, 45 kilometres northwest of Montreal.

Condo is a Micmac peacekeeper from the Gesgapegiag reserve in the Gaspé
peninsula. He said the auxiliary peacekeepers will stay in Kanesatake until
peace and order are restored.

In the last two years, peacekeepers have seized marijuana with a street
value of more than $7 million from serveral Kanesatake properties, Gabriel
noted. He claimed that marijuana is being cultivated in up to 60
properties. There are about 450 homes.

"People have to be concerned about what's going on," he said. "They have to
be aware of the risks associated with the drug trade."

The band council is seeking almost $2 million from the provincial and
federal governments to beef up security. Representatives of the
solicitor-general's office in Ottawa and the Quebec Public Security
Department are to meet shortly with Mohawk leaders.

"We're aware that they're asking for more funding for the security budget,"
Louis-Pascal Cyr, aide to Public Security Minister Serge Ménard, said
yesterday. "We're going to wait to hear what they have to tell us before we
make any further comment."

Robert Gabriel, a former band councillor and distant cousin of James
Gabriel, has been the focus of police investigations. Peacekeepers raided
his home on Sept. 26 and seized $40,000 U.S.

The peacekeepers never charged him with drug offences and returned the
money to him.

But on Sept. 28, Robert Gabriel was charged with assaulting James Gabriel
in the band council office.

Robert Gabriel accused the grand chief yesterday of blowing the drug-trade
problem out of proportion. "It's not any worse than anywhere else."

Robert Gabriel made headlines on July 29, 1995, when he led Ménard in a
televised raid on marijuana plantations in Kanesatake.

The peacekeepers took over policing from the Sûreté du Québec in 1997. The
transfer came after longstanding tensions between Mohawks and the
provincial police, peaking in the 1990 Oka crisis, when Sûreté Cpl. Marcel
Lemay was killed in a gun battle.