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WHO IS THE DUMBEST COP
IN WINNIPEG?
You be the judge after reading
the following:
At approximately 3:45 A.M.
one December morning a number of years ago, my home in
an upscale Winnipeg neighbourhood was raided by six (6) members
of the Winnipeg Police Department who arrived in three (3) unmarked
police vehicles. They presented me with a Provincial Court
Warrant To Search, sworn under oath by Phillip Siatecki, badge
number 1452 of the Winnipeg Police Department, stating,
"that there are reasonable
grounds for believing that the following offence has been committed:
That between December 13th and 18th, Frederick (not the correct
spelling of my name) Woodward did unlawfully have in his possession
an unregistered restricted weapon for which he did not have a
registration certificate. Contrary to the Criminal Code. And
that to wit:
.38 calibre handgun
.22 calibre handgun
which will provide evidence of and relating to the said offence
are concealed in the premises of Frederick (sic) Woodward."
After checking their credentials
and phoning their idiotic inspector at police headquarters to
ensure they were really policemen (they were not in police uniforms
and appeared more like home invaders, or some kind of goon squad
going to a beer bash) I removed from an office safe the two handguns
they were looking for along with my valid registration certificates
for both. The handguns had both been purchased new with
permits signed personally by the Chief of the Winnipeg
Police Department at the time they were acquired. The Winnipeg
Police warrant alleged that the handguns were "concealed";
the National Firearms Act would describe them as being safely
stored. If they had been laying around in the open I would
have, quite legitimately, been charged with careless storage
of firearms.
The policemen left, looking
very sheepish for this completely unjustified intrusion on a
law-abiding citizen asleep at his residence at that time of the
morning. I say law-abiding because I had not, and have
not to this day, ever been charged with committing a criminal
act, much less been convicted. I do not blame the constables
who came to my residence for this unconscionable police harassment
because they were only following orders from their moronic superiors
who sent them on this fool's errand. Could it be that officer
Phillip Siatecki was either too ignorant or too
lazy to check the restricted weapons registry? For
being made the laughing stock of the Winnipeg Police Department
I believe officer Siatecki initiated a vendetta against
me, determined to confiscate my target pistols on other grounds
since his first attempt failed so abysmally! Moreover, on one
warrant his name is typed as Phillip and on another warrant
it is Philip, so what can you say about someone who doesn't
even know how to spell his own name? Perhaps I am being too harsh;
it is possible, at least in theory, that he had a legal name
change during the interval between the two warrants.
This extravagant and utterly
unnecessary waste of police resources, six policemen and three
vehicles, was by the same police department that a few years
later was unable to respond to four frantic 911 calls from two
women about to be murdered. They finally responded after the
fifth call, but by the time they arrived it had become a homicide
investigation.
This is the same police department that in 1997 put four
innocent young men on trial for the fatal beating of a man in
a queer lovers lane. Only one problem. When the trial
was about to begin it transpired that at least one of the accused
had proof that he was not even in Manitoba when the crime took
place, and neither was the Winnipeg Police Department's supposed
"eye witness" who was supposed to win their trumped
up case by bearing false witness against the accused. Case
dismissed! I won't even waste space by recounting the shameful
framing and incarceration of the unfortunate Thomas Sophanow
for the murder of Barbara Stoppel in Winnipeg, as I am sure it
is still fresh in everyone's memory.
What reasonable grounds
there were for believing that I had committed an offence was
never revealed to me, but they must have been sufficient to convince
some simple minded magistrate to sign the search warrant. Unlike
judges, magistrates are not lawyers, but more likely incompetents
who either couldn't pass the entrance examinations or flunked
out of law school. Why these clowns are allowed to become involved
in the judicial process is unfathomable, but they are certainly
accommodating of the demands of equally incompetent cops.
So I ask you, who is the dumbest
cop in Winnipeg? In fact I can go one step further and
ask, who is the dumbest cop on the dumbest police force in Canada?
You be the judge.
Submitted by:
Fred B. Woodward, CD
17 La Vista Country Estates
RR 3 Summerland, B.C.
V0H 1Z0
Phone: (250) 404-0425
Unlicensed gun owner, 24, given
national support
By INGRID PERITZ, Globe
and Mail, Mar. 5, 2003
MONTREAL -- Jean-François
Laflamme was caught with an expired gun licence while on a moose-hunting
trip last fall. Now he is a cause célèbre to
opponents of Canada's controversial firearms law.
Several gun owners from across
the country have rallied around Mr. Laflamme, a 24-year-old machinist
from Quebec, who faces criminal charges under the gun-control
law for failing to have a valid firearms licence.
He could face six months in
jail and a $2,000 fine.
Opponents of the firearms legislation
say his case exposes abuses in the way the program is being applied.
On Monday, members of the Canadian
Unregistered Firearms Owners Association came from as far as
Alberta and Saskatchewan to Trois-Rivières, where Mr.
Laflamme made a court appearance, to lend him support.
They also staged a peaceful
protest at Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's riding office
in nearby Shawinigan.
"This demonstrates how
[the firearms law] makes criminals out of honest citizens,"
Claire Joly, Quebec spokesman for the group, said in an interview
yesterday.
Mr. Laflamme, who accompanied
his father on hunting trips starting at the age of five, was
driving on a moose-hunting trip in October when he pulled into
a church parking lot south of Trois-Rivières for a nap.
Two provincial police officers
made a routine check of his Volkswagen Jetta.
When they found a Browning
rifle -- properly stored -- in the trunk, they asked to see Mr.
Laflamme's permit.
He showed his firearms-acquisition
certificate, but it had expired six months earlier.
His gun was confiscated, and
Mr. Laflamme was later charged under the firearms law for failing
to have a valid possession licence. He was fingerprinted at a
police station and has pleaded not guilty.
"I didn't hold up a bank,
I was just going hunting -- a legal activity," Mr. Laflamme
said yesterday.
He added that he had simply
been unaware that his permit had expired.
"I have nothing against
laws, we need laws, but this law is abusive."
Serge Bizier, Mr. Laflamme's
lawyer, said his client intended to comply with the new rules
but had not received notification from Ottawa about the new program.
"He got no warning,"
he said yesterday.
"He's never had so much
as a driving ticket. Now he's being treated the same way you'd
treat a murderer. It's rough."
He said that Mr. Laflamme,
a resident of Plessisville, could end up with a criminal record.
Although he has received the support of opponents of the law,
Mr. Laflamme is not an activist, he said.
Mr. Bizier said his goal is
to get his client off the hook, but he will not rule out a constitutional
challenge of the gun law.
The firearms law generated
strong protests this year as the deadline for people to register
their guns approached.
The law also required owners
of long guns -- rifles and shotguns -- to obtain possession licences
by Dec. 31, 2000, or after their firearms-acquisition certificates
expired.
David Austin, a spokesman for
the Canadian Firearms Centre, said the government sent notices
to all certificate holders, such as Mr. Laflamme, notifying them
about the licensing system.
"We spent a good amount
of taxpayers' money to remind firearms owners of their obligation
under the Firearms Act, both about licensing and registration,"
Mr. Austin said.
He said 90 per cent of firearms
owners have obtained licences or applied for them. Of the 7.9
million guns in Canada, 6.1 million have been registered under
the new law.
© 2003 Bell Globemedia
Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Letter sent to man who
died in 1974
By Monica Graham / West
New Annan, The Halifax Herald, January 20, 2003
The federal gun registry is
chasing a Colchester County man beyond the grave to make sure
he registers a restricted firearm.
Albert (Bert) Byers died Dec.
9, 1974, but that didn't stop the government from writing him
a letter recently to get him to register his handgun.
"I guess they don't check
that sort of thing," said his great-nephew, Glenn Byers,
whose parents received the notice in their rural mailbox. They
are probably the closest living relatives of his Uncle Bert,
a bachelor who would be 108 now, Mr. Byers said.
Not only is Bert Byers lying
in the West New Annan cemetery, but it is unlikely that he owned
a restricted firearm.
"No one remembers him
ever having a handgun," Mr. Byers said. The notice doesn't
say exactly what type of restricted firearm Bert Byers is supposed
to have had, but a handgun is the most common type, he added.
Following a 1950s house fire,
Bert Byers moved to a woods camp to live out the rest of his
days. His great-nephew, also of West New Annan, said he probably
owned a rifle, because he hunted for his own meat.
Mr. Byers suspects old records
may show his great-uncle registered a firearm following 1934
handgun legislation, but authorities have lost its trail through
subsequent on-again, off-again gun control.
Mr. Byers tried contacting
the firearms registry, only to have automated voices tell him
to try again. Eventually he reached someone who told him the
onus is on the gun owner to notify the registry.
"They must think he has
a phone buried with him," Mr. Byers said. "He'd find
it all amusing if he were here. . . . If it wasn't costing anything,
it would be hilariously funny."
Gun owners were supposed to
register their firearms by Dec. 31, or state their intention
to do so. The process, designed to control access to firearms
and thus fight crime, has come under fire recently because its
costs, originally tagged at $2 million, could surpass $1 billion
by 2005, the federal auditor general said in December.
Roads are terrible and hospitals
are closing, yet money is wasted mailing notices to long-dead
people who owned a gun, maybe, more than 25 years ago, Mr. Byers
said.
"If they come looking
for him, I'll be happy to tell them where to find him,"
he said.
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Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
