An RCMP officer approached the Carlos residence in the late afternoon of March 2.

He was alone and without concern for officer safety.

He was the bearer of good news. In the back of his service vehicle was Allen Carlos' legally-owned firearms collection that a four-member SWAT team had seized from the same house four years ago.

When the Carlos case was in full cry, the young Corporal was posted in the village of Ross River. Some of the two men's mutual friends had given the officer an earful as details of the travesty unfolded.

The officer likes firearms and sports hunting. When he went downstairs into the RCMP vault, where Carlos' guns had gathered dust for four years, he didn't pick up the beautifully-crafted pieces and toss them into the back of his vehicle.

He handled the property with the same respect he would have his own. The long arms were wrapped in a protective plastic-type material for the short ride to the Riverdale subdivision; the handguns were in carrying cases.

Three handguns weren't coming home, though. One was his favorite Ruger .44 Magnum super Black Hawk, which Carlos had carried in the bush for many field seasons.

For the first time in 20 years, a firearms officer had denied Carlos a "permit to carry" a sidearm in 1999.

Shortly afterwards, his home was invaded.

Another favorite handgun was an impressive nickel-plated Ruger SP-101 .357 Magnum which the government had designated "prohibited" for no other reason than its short barrel length.

But the government had trusted Carlos and granted him "grandfather rights" to the handsome firearm with its shiny, white-metallic texture. Under the "prohibited status", he could do little more than lock it away to be admired with the reverence of a rare Stradivarius violin.

Another favorite piece the government had categorized "prohibited" was a novelty, derringer-sized Freedom Arms short-barrel .22 pistol with a little brown carrying pouch.

While the Crown prosecutor, David McWhinnie, wanted Carlos to have to forfeit his whole collection, Carlos was only forced to give the three handguns as gifts to the Queen.

When the Supreme Court of Canada deemed Carlos guilty of sin in April 2002, his sentencing was referred back to the federal deputy judge Deborah Livingstone, who had initially acquitted him at trial. She tapped him lightly on the wrist with a six-month probation but no criminal record.

In recognition of Carlos as a responsible citizen and dedicated family man, who is definitely not a threat to "public safety", Livingstone most likely would have returned the three handguns to him except for Criminal Code Section 491(1).

Essentially, this law has converted plunder into a right.

It says that a person who has committed sin in the state's eyes, in which items have been seized and kept in custody, have to be forfeited to the state without compensation and to be disposed of as the attorney general sees fit.

The key words are "disposed of"; it does not say "destroyed".

Those mint-condition guns were of high monetary value as they approached collector status. The two "prohibited" ones could not be purchased across a counter any more.

Somebody through privilege or skulduggery has possession of them at this moment. Otherwise, Carlos should have been invited to come witness their destruction. The government didn't do that, and the guns will likely turn up some day. Won't they?

The RCMP were not acting on their own volition when returning the rest of the seized loot to the rightful owner. The police's instructions were issued from Dan Otterbein, the chief firearms officer for the Yukon. His marching orders came from a regional firearms officer down south.

In late 2003, Otterbein had called Carlos to a meeting to discuss the return of his firearms licence, which came by mail almost immediately thereafter.

About a year earlier, around October 2002, Carlos had started the process of applying for his registration certificates. He would need those pieces of paper to reclaim his lawfully-owned goods.

But the paperwork was suspiciously stalled.

Carlos patiently waited several months. In early 2004, a two-minute phone conversation with the Canadian Firearms Centre in Miramichi, New Brunswick, confirmed the registrations were indeed there. But the employee didn't know he wanted the paperwork mailed to him!
Aargh! What would they think a person wanted done with their licences and registrations? To think our hard-earned tax dollars actually pay these people a salary.

The paperwork soon showed up in the mailbox, and the RCMP were obliged to return his guns.

The police could have been stinkers. They could have told Carlos if he wanted his guns, come get 'em, then claimed every visit that the exhibit men were off duty or in China.

After all, when the guns were initially seized, Cst. Wayne Gork had put the onus on Carlos to come to the detachment to pick up a copy of the exhibit list, although the police never felt any compunction about driving to the house on numerous occasions to serve him with yet another legal document.

The police didn't do that, though. Cpl. Bennett fulfilled his promise to bring the guns back to the place of origin.

Over the years, some officers had indicated a dislike for what had happened to Carlos. Perhaps coming directly to him, so as not to inconvenience him further, could be construed as the best the local RCMP could offer as a form of apology.

I dunno. But, personally, I do not forgive them. I only hope the superior officers will keep their spun-out-of-control members restrained on a short leash.

I recently stumbled upon a court decision rendered on an unrelated matter in which the judge felt obligated to do the unusual of adding a postscript:

"Cases such as this are occurring with disturbing frequency in our courts. I urge the police and the Crown to review their practices and policies to ensure that cases such as this one do not waste the time of the Court or unnecessarily expend the taxpayers' limited resources."

I personally trust that the Crown and the police will take the advice under advisement. As we know, frivolous and vindictive court cases can and do financially drain innocent people, or, worse, can destroy the whole family unit.

In my not-so-humble opinion, police should be out breaking down doors of dangerous career criminals and leaving decent people in peace.

Carlos and his older son, Luke, who was witness to the raid, helped the young officer carry the guns downstairs where the collection had been plundered from a regulation gun safe on Feb. 15, 2000.

Carlos, who holds a close kinship for his guns, felt like long lost family members had finally come home again as the firearms were carefully laid out on the felt surface of the pool table.

Together, he and the officer ticked off each one against the exhibit list and examined them for damage. Amazingly, there was no rust. Somebody had gone to the trouble to periodically oil and clean the guns while in custody.

The superficial scuffs, scrapes, scratches and nicks were probably sustained when the guns were removed irreverently from the safe and stacked on the floor "like cordwood", then gathered up and dumped unceremoniously in the back of police vans for the trip to the Whitehorse detachment.

The Ottawa Liberals passed a dysfunctional, Draconian, non-Charter-proofed Firearms Act that allows the state to take such abusive measures against its own peaceable citizens under the guise of "public safety".

Where's the "public safety" element? Do you feel safer that Carlos was deprived of his guns for four years?

What was gained for the government to spend over $2.7 million from the public purse to viciously prosecute an upstanding Whitehorse family? Does everybody feel safer that he was forced into the Supreme Court of Canada? Does everybody feel safer that he was set back about $75,000 in legal expenses during the traumatic ordeal?

The only benefit I can determine is that a bunch of bureaucrats and their support staffs were kept employed and off the streets.

Main players to come up against a lone citizen included a Gang of Four plainclothesmen raiding the house; a firearms officer as an accomplice; a local Crown prosecutor who specializes in drumming up gun cases for the courtroom; a territorial judge to sign a search warrant that said Carlos was a "threat to public safety and to his family"; and, later, an Ottawa-based Crown attorney at Supreme Court level.

A federal judge was parachuted into Whitehorse from London, Ontario, to hear the 2-1/2 day trial;

Carlos was acquitted. Three appeal court judges were brought in from British Columbia; Carlos was acquitted again.

Seven of nine Supreme Court justices were obliged to hear the last chapter of the sordid story in Ottawa;

Carlos was convicted on all three counts.

As stated on the cover page of my on-line book JUSTICE SERVED UP YUKONSLAVIA STYLE (www.dolphin software.bc.ca/firearms/Carlos/index.htm):

"How can a person be criminally convicted in the Supreme Court of Canada for a law that does not exist?"

When the Carloses were forced into the highest court in this compassionate country over what the Crown perceived to be "storage" infractions, the word had not been legally defined by Parliament to incorporate into the Criminal Code or the Firearms Act.

The top court rendered a conviction within 10 minutes but never bothered writing a legal definition of the word "store", as everybody in the gun community thought would happen.

Therefore, a law that didn't exist when Carlos was pushed into the Supreme Court and convicted still doesn't exist today.

What was the point of an illustrious Justice system amusing itself persecuting a family for such a long duration if, in the conclusion, the guns would be returned, anyway?

Furthermore, the gun prohibition hearing, the raison d'etre the Crown alleged for seizing Carlos' guns in the first place, never happened, either. The procedure was stayed.

He never met his accusers--the police's eight witnesses--in court like justice used to be done. So, I took care of that little piece of business in my on-line book manuscript which will serve as a reminder of this judicial travesty in perpetuity.

Asked what advice he might give others who are awaiting return of wrongly-seized property, Carlos simply remarked, "Patience."

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Copyright 2004 diArmani.com