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Six Nations get RCMP presence by Andrea Buma OHSWEKEN - RCMP officer Jeff Cooper will spend the next year in the community, working out of the Six Nations police office in an arrangement known as "secondment" in police lingo. Cooper is here in an attempt to improve the somewhat tarnished reputation of the RCMP in the Six Nations community. Police Chief Glenn Lickers comments, "I don't want to open old wounds, but there have historically been many grievances and disagreements between the community and the RCMP. To the credit of the RCMP they brought 10 people at the Hamilton detachment that were more open to the idea of native policing. This initiative is possible because of the groundwork that has been laid, a few years ago we wouldn't even have considered it." In fact, Six Nations police presented retiring RCMP Staff Sergeant Murray Wood with a special award during last month's community awareness week. Lickers says that Wood has been a good friend to the Six Nations, and was in charge of the native liaison program for Ontario. "Sgt. Wood and people like him deserve a lot of credit for something like this taking off. And Jeff himself has a lot to do with it. We have had three years to build a relationship with him," comments Lickers. Cooper is a Six Nations band member who was raised off-reserve. He has been serving the First Nations Community Service Officer out of the Hamilton detachment for the past (Continued on page 2)