"If the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the Laws; the public revenues squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizens will be violated or disregarded." -- Noah Webster, scholar of dictionary fame.

When an Ontario police detective recently cautioned a news conference audience not to mistake the violent bikers for innocent motorcycle enthusiasts, he should have gone one step further.

He should have advised, Just bcause bikers own guns don't confuse these hard-boiled murderers with innocent, law-abiding sports shooters and firearms enthusiasts.

It would have behooved the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) to listen up.

Although Ontario judges are known for handing down good court decisions, as in the Jonathan Logan case, the OPP are notorious for their shabby treatment of gun owners.

The Canadian police asked for harsher laws to catch and convict career criminals and ragtag street gangs. The Liberals in Ottawa cheerfully obliged with organized crime and anti-terrorist legislation that contravenes every Constitutional Charter of Rights ever written. Ironically, the accused has to be in court to activate those rights.

The police added special enforcement units to deal specifically with bikers and weapons. But the terrorists and bikers proved dangerous and smart, operating under their own criminal codes. It is not wise to bust down their doors. They have strong fortresses and firing power--even tanks. Hardened criminals bite back. In turn the narco-terrorist rings flourish while thumbing their noses at authority.

The police and prosecuting attorneys, not wanting the War on Crime legislation to go stale, turned to using excerpts from the parliamentary acts on vulnerable individuals.

When there is a major screw-up, police commanders always claim that the exercise was carried out in "perfect textbook fashion", which is probably true if they were chasing pimps, drug lords and mass murderers.

The members of the military-trained Provincial Weapons Enforcement Unit (PWEU) are robots programmed for high-risk take-downs. They do not stand around chatting while assessing individual situations; they go into combat-style action that often gets out of hand.

It probably won't make a whit of difference that Mr. Justice J.J. Douglas severely chastised the police for their thoughtless, careless behaviour in a blistering, 51-page indictment that took nearly three hours to read to a full Barrie, Ont., courtoom on February 10 (See CanLII, R.v.Login (sic), 2006 ONCJ 51).

But at least it provides some satisfaction to the accused whose Constitutional Charter of Rights were infringed no less than four times by the police and once by the court system itself.

The judge pointed out that the Criminal Code contemplates summary matters to proceed to trial in 30 days. The Supreme Court of Canada and other authorities suggest guidelines ranging from eight to 12 months.

The 33 months to schedule the trial of Jonathan Wesley Logan was well beyond what would be considered "reasonable" in section 11 of the Charter, he scolded.

The story started on Tuesday, May 27, 2003. A farmer had requested a local 29-year-old expert hunter reduce the destructive groundhog population in his field.

Logan, who has a healthy respect for the law, was well-papered with every license, permit and registration the government could dream up. He even had written consent from the farmer to take on the assignment. To boot, there are no laws preventing discharge of a firearm in the small rural municipality.

As a safety measure, the hunter had waited until late afternoon until the school was empty for the day. The field where he was working lay adjacent to a school yard. Dressed in scent-resistant camouflages pulled over street clothes, the hunter was on his belly picking off pesky rodents.

His rifle was always pointed at the ground and away from the Baxter Public School, located more than 300 metres behind him. Around suppertime, voices alerted him to students returning to practice soccer.

He immediately unloaded and zipped the quality hunting rifle into the protective carrying case which he placed in his truck. He drove the less than one kilometre home under the speed limit, which accounts for why he had never had a speeding ticket or other infractions.

He was reputed as a clean-cut, hard-working young man. His deep-seated respect for the law had spurred him to apply to join the police force.

Meanwhile, Richard Grove, the soccer coach, did what most citizens would do. He called 911 on his cell phone. He was not reporting anything. There was no imminent emergency asserted by his tone nor by any chaotic screaming in the background.

In a calm speaking voice, Grove simply asked a question: "We're at a soccer practice in Baxter, okay, and there's a gentleman right next to us with a very high-powered rifle, army fatigues and shooting. I'm just curious if he's allowed to do that?"

From hereon, the chain of events went disastrously off the rails. The inexperienced dispatcher did not keep the caller on the line to monitor the call and gain more information that might be helpful to the police.

Like most women, she over-reacted and disconnected the phone within a few seconds. She had heard the words "gun" and "school" and relayed a poisoned message to the Nottawasaga police that a man with a gun was on the prowl at the Baxter school.

The police vehicles were moving at excessive, out-of-control speed which the judge condemned as a hazard to public safety. At the school, they found a soccer game in progress but no gunman; no problem. They did not investigate, per se. Neither had they responded to the call for nothing. They sped off on a determined mission to "get their man".

When Logan pulled into the driveway, his 27-year-old wife was in the front yard playing with the couple's two-year-old daughter, Kaitlyn, and the fragile three-year-old son, Josuha.

The mother was ready to take the children inside. It was time for the little guy's hourly feeding and medication. Josuha, who had to be fed through a stomach tube, had undergone a heart transplant at age three weeks.

Suddenly, all hell broke loose.

A contingent of wailing, flashing police vehicles screeched wildly up to the Logan house. Out poured at least a dozen, spun-out-of-control members of the OPP and the military-garbed Weapons Enforcement Unit. They were armed to the hilt with loaded rifles, shotguns and an arsenal of non-restricted, restricted and prohibited firearms.

Nobody was in charge; each man reacted independently which undoubtedly accounted for the situation turning into a "high-risk take-down" feeding frenzy. One police officer went so far as to try to call in military backup if troops happened to be practicing maneuvers nearby!

Constable Brian Luscombe pointed a Ruger .223 calibre Mini-14 at Logan who put up his hands. Constables Norman Galenzoski and Darrin Young pointed shotguns at him.

He was forced to his knees then dumped head first in the driveway. An officer roughly hand-cuffed him. A terrified Logan was begging for his life. "Please don't shoot me; I have two kids."

While Logan was roughed-up and raped, one hyped hot-shot pointed his 12-gauge shotgun in the faces of the mother and children. Angela was kneeling on the ground, cradling the traumatized children. "Why are you doing this to my husband?" she cried out. "He didn't do anything wrong."

She was ordered not to move and maybe was told to shut up.

This sickening scene is reminiscent of Randy Weaver's 10-month-old baby flying from its mother's arms when combat-clad FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi's M-16 bullet tore Vicki Weaver's head from her body during an 11-day siege at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992 (Star, April 19, 2004).

Horiuchi was charged but exonerated of murder because he was "acting in the line of duty"; Vicki, a wife and mother, who was "in the line of fire", was written off by government as a piece of dead meat.

Just as the FBI had no search warrant to trespass the Weaver property, neither did the OPP have a search warrant to paw through Logan's and his father's vehicles, then storm the Logan house. Search of his private residence was illegal and unconstitutional, the judge admonished.

The callous officers "froze" it, anyway, refusing the mother admittance to feed and medicate her ill son, although she showed them the feeding tube.

In reverse Stalinistic tactics, they forced her and the children to stay put and watch while Logan was slammed against the back of a cruiser and strip searched.

The incident could have easily escalated into a gang rape. A bunch of men, feeding off each other's adrenalin, could find perverted sensual pleasure from forcing helpless victims watch as another family member was sexually abused.

Have we learned nothing since the Years of Terror? Stalin's secret police practiced these atrocities in interrogation rooms in the 1930s. A gang of officers would rape the wife, daughters and sons while another officer's jackboot applied pressure on the naked prisoner's testicles to force a confession to a "crime" he never committed. Then he was sent to face the trial judge who automatically sentenced the prisoner to death by firing squad.

In full view of God, wife, son, daughter, neighbours and passers-by, Logan was stripped of his privacy, dignity and pants.

Galenzoski dropped the camouflages to the ankles, then pulled down his jeans baring his fanny. He reached down and tweaked his prey's testicles. Galenzoski told the court he gave "a gentle squeeze to ensure it was consistent". Huh?

Then he rammed a black Kevlar gloved finger into the anal cavity, completing the physical examination with aid of a flashlight. Galenzoski can re-tell his denial to another judge. He and his constable cronies, Young and Luscombe, have been sued for assault and unlawfully pointing firearms at people.

When a man fondles another man's genitals and sticks a finger, carrot or other object into the rectum of an unconsenting male who is not enjoying the experience, that is rape.

What in hell's name did this brainless bunch expect to find in the anal cavity? Drugs? Diamonds? A concealed weapon? A gopher? Jimmy Hoffa?

Really, they didn't expect to find anything. They committed the atrocity simply because they were giddy with power and probably had no real sense of what would happen if they pulled the triggers of their weapons.

Many outraged locals fumed that the public frisking in his nether regions was an outrageous overkill and they were incensed with this "monstrous" act. Hey, gun owners should know by now that this is the police state of Kanuckistan.

"The police had not a whit of evidence to suggest he was operating a firearm dangerously," Judge Douglas ruled. Further, the judge noted the police had no right to enter the man's dwelling and charge him with serious, gun-related crimes. The police didn't have a judge-issued warrant to trespass but had the opportunity to obtain a warrant before entering the premises.

Instead, the police coerced Logan to sign a consent to search. Even if the accused had been given a chance to read what he signed, the words most likely wouldn't have registered in his traumatized mental state.

Neither would the police allow the accused his constitutional rights to speak to a lawyer before signing the consent. Basically, Logan was trying to co-operate and prove he had nothing to hide.

The police searched the house, removed the guns from the storage cabinet, but couldn't find any infractions.

Suddenly, an officer's gleeful voice wafted from the basement, "We got him!" The officer had found a .22 calibre rifle on the workbench near the cartridge reloading equipment. The goofs slapped him with two storage infractions under section 86.1 of the Criminal Code. The charges didn't stick in court. The rifle was partially dismantled and inoperable when the police seized it, thus rendering the nearby bullets useless.

In a further unlawful display, the police arrested Logan and detained him at the police station for six hours. Most likely he was booked, fingerprinted, photographed and generally harassed. It was in the privacy of the police station where the judge suggested any strip searching deemed necessary should have been done; not out in public view.

Fifteen court appearances and over 33 months later, Judge Douglas invited defense counsel, Paul Shaw and Brian McClellan, of Collingwood, to bring forward a motion to dismiss the case and an order for the return of all property seized.

Logan's property was miraculously returned, though not in mint condition, which is normal. To add insult to injury, the recovered goods had to be held by a relative until Logan could renew a possession-and-acquisition license (PAL) that expired during this sordid mess. As well, Logan had been denied the right to hunt, therefore, was prevented from carrying out his duty of feeding his family.

"The Logan case should be a wake up call to law enforcement," wrote lawyer Paul Shaw in a brief discussion of the victory.

"There are legitimate uses for firearms by law-abiding citizens and this needs to be assessed in any police response. It should not have required a rocket scientist to realize quickly that Jonathan was properly conducting himself in a lawful activity.

"There was no illegal activity at Baxter. Jonathan should have been expeditiously released with an apology." Evidently a forgiving man, Logan did tell the Toronto Sun he would have accepted an apology and a handshake.

"The heavy-handed tactics of the police, the lack of direction and absence of a proper chain of command led to the situation getting totally out of hand," continued Shaw.

The lawyer asserted that the judge's decision should help put perspective into future police responses.

"Police should be prepared for the worst but be prepared to make an independent analysis based on facts obtained and react accordingly. The law requires it. Society expects it."

-- 30 --

Copyright 2005 diArmani.com