Emotions run high in RCMP-related shooting deaths

The emotion was thick in Lorraine Cutarm’s voice and in the room as the grieving mother relayed how she lost one son and had another injured at the hands of the RCMP.

“This all comes from my heart,” she said in a shaking voice to United Nations Special Rapporteur James Anaya when he stopped in Hobbema on Oct. 11 during his whirlwind eight-day tour of Canada. She said her family advised her she wasn’t ready to speak but she had to. “I need to be heard. I need to know is anything ever going to change?”

On Aug. 3, a traffic stop by the Wetaskiwin RCMP near Ma-Me-O Beach resulted in the shooting death of Cutarm’s son Lance Cutarm (30) and the shooting injury of another son, Larron Cutarm (41). Also in the vehicle and witness to the incident were Cutarm’s husband, youngest son and brother-in-law.

Cutarm said she used to listen to her father and uncles talk about the way RCMP treated them.

“And this is still happening to my family,” she said.

Cold Lake First Nation Chief Bernice Martial also shared her loss with Anaya.

Daniel Charland, Martial’s 52-year-old nephew, was shot by the RCMP on Aug. 15 after an altercation at his home on the reserve.
Martial admitted that Charland had been in trouble and that it was serving a warrant that brought the RCMP to her sister’s home.

“But this, they did not have to shoot him that way,” she said. “It was like shooting a dog.”

Martial said she has asked for a report from the RCMP and has yet to get anything.

Both Charland’s shooting and the Cutarm shootings  are under investigation by the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team, an investigation that Lorraine Cutarm calls into question.

“The RCMP should not be investigating themselves when atrocities happen on reserve,” she said. “These authorities should not be investigating themselves. How right is that?”

In a telephone interview with Sweetgrass, former prosecutor Clifton Purvis, executive director and civilian member with ASIRT, stressed that the RCMP was not investigating itself. ASIRT has 30 staff including members seconded to it by the RCMP, Calgary and Edmonton police services, military police, and on occasion the Blood Tribe Police. Each investigation includes a three-member command triangle supervised by civilians.

“There is no way we would make the primary investigator on that one of my seconded RCMP members,” said Purvis. “We really try and make sure that the investigation is as independent and objective as can be.”

This also pertains to a third investigation ASIRT has underway dealing with another Aboriginal man who was shot. Curtis Hallock, 28, was stopped by two RCMP officers near Grande Cache on Aug. 1, and shot multiple times. He sustained non-life threatening injuries.

Purvis says he understands that incidences like these lead to high emotions and people need answers.

“The community feels it acutely as well as the affected person and the police,” he said. “But … we’re not going to sacrifice comprehensive investigation just to get it done quickly so we’ll do what needs to be done even if it takes longer.”

Cutarm told the crowd, “I will not let it go,” to which she received a round of applause. “I will fight for justice for my son and my family as long as it takes and as long as I live.”

International Chief Wilton Littlechild, who also serves as chair of the UN’s expert mechanism on the rights of Indigenous peoples and accompanied Anaya in Alberta, said the concerns held by Aboriginal people about the RCMP are not specific to this province.

“There is a call to work in that area,” he said.