'Beware of Female Feds'(backgrounder to Carlos case, letter by Jane Gaffin |
The trial of local resident Allen Carlos, who was in territorial court in late July to face three firearms charges,has captured national and international attention. Readers will be enlightened--and maybe made wary--by Shafer Parker's article "Beware of Female Feds", published in the Alberta Report Newsmagazine on September 25, 2000. Any man who encounters a female inspector in the field may want to consider turning tail and running like the wind. Otherwise, he could end up in a legal mess of monumental proportions. About 6 p.m. on August 5, 1998, federal mining inspectors Sandra Orban and Steve Howes drove up to Mr. Carlos' mining camp on Grew Creek near the village of Ross River, says the article. It never occurred to Mr. Carlos that a vigorously-expressed opinion would lead to the RCMP raiding his upscale Whitehorse home a year and half later. Ms. Orban didn't get around to filing a complaint with the police until January 19, 1999--nearly five months after the imagined event took place. She accused Mr. Carlos of threatening to shoot any government people who came onto his property packing guns. Mr. Carlos insisted in an affidavit that while his behaviour may have been less than exemplary, at no point did he voice such a threat. Mr. Howes backs up Mr. Carlos. "I don't remember him ever stating that he was going to shoot anybody," Mr. Howes told the police in an interview. "What I do remember is him just ranting and raving that his rights were being taken away by all the gun control laws." When the police questioned Mr. Howes a second time, he still denied hearing any threats. "It was just your typical getting-out-of-hand rhetoric. We've heard it a million times before." The police ignored statements from Mr. Howes and other men witnesses and spent more than a year gathering statements from two more female government employees--both acquaintances of Ms. Orban--about other alleged threats Mr. Carlos supposedly made. Male witnesses only recalled Mr. Carlos' anger about new gun regulations. But they didn't feel at all threatened by him. Nevertheless, the police pursued the matter aggressively, eventually applying for a search warrant and raiding his house on February 15, 2000. In court in July, 2000, Edmonton-based defence lawyer Richard Fritze argued that the handguns found by police were properly registered, and storage laws could not have been broken because Mr. Carlos was at home when the raid took place. He said gun owners have a right to take weapons out of storage for cleaning and maintenance, and the Criminal Code explicitly allows Canadians to keep loaded weapons in their homes as a means of protection. The article points out that without Ms. Orban's accusations, Mr. Carlos' gun collection would not have been seized, and he would not have been charged with any gun violations. "If Mr. Carlos truly represented a public safety risk," asked Mr. Fritze, "why wait a year before having four policemen search his home?" The Carlos case also struck a chord with two New York-based writers, who are currently working on articles for popular U.S. publications. They are awaiting a final written decision from deputy judge Deborah Livingstone, who only heard 2-1/2 days of testimony in territorial court before rushing back to Ontario, where she presides.
(Note: Carlos was acquitted on all three charges; Crown appealed, acquitted again; Crown appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada, which will carry a hefty pricetag in the $80,000 range to defend. A trust fund for Allen Carlos has been set up at the Bank of Montreal, Whitehorse. All donations to account number 8075-985 will be gratefully accepted. For more information, please phone Paul Rogan, president of Responsible Firearms Owners Coalition, Whitehorse, at 1-867-668-5609, or e-mail firearms@yukon.net.) - 30 - Copyright 2004 diArmani.com |