WILL JUSTICE EVER BE SERVED? AL CARLOS' SIDE

(backgrounder, based on an article from "round one" about the Yukon's latest folk hero by Jane Gaffin, Yukon News, October 4, 2000)

by Jane Gaffin

"First, I'd like to say that at no time did I commit physical violence or threaten anyone with the use of a firearm," Allen Carlos told over 160 supporters packing the Gold Rush Inn conference room last September, 2000.

Participants came from all over the Yukon to support Carlos. Many were gun owners; some were not.

But the common thread among the guests was the interest in civil liberties and personal freedoms to own private property-guns,, cars, houses--without fear of confiscation by the state.

While Carlos is first to be fingered by the law, nobody knows who will be next in line for assistance from a legal-defence fund.

"Most of us would have fallen on our ass if someone had told us we were a threat to public safety," chairman Paul Rogan said in his opening remarks.

"We feel the Carloses have been mistreated. They've been attacked. They've been debated at great emotional and financial cost.

"No matter what the law says, it's wrong. That's why we are here tonight. Listen carefully to what Al has to say. It is not a made-up story. He lived through it."

In late July, 2000, the mineral prospector was in territorial court facing three firearms storage charges following a police raid on the family's home on February 15, 2000.

To help offset his legal expenses to fight the charges, the Responsible Firearms Owners Coalition sponsored the fund-raising event.

Over $8,200 was raised through ticket sales, a silent auction and out-of-pocket donations as well as deposits to a trust account set up at the Bank of Montreal.

Edmonton-based defence lawyer Richard Fritze contributed time to the cause, too.

The rousing three-hour meeting--punctuated with resounding applause, laughter and good verbal exchanges--was a celebration to launch a new fight against legislation and a legal system that makes criminals out of honest citizens who have done no wrong.

"This is democracy in action," advised Paul Rogan, who displayed a copy of the 57-page application the police compiled to obtain a search warrant.

The public document contains testimony the police obtained in interviews from at least eight witnesses and brief statements written by several others.

On August 5, 1998, federal mining inspectors Sandra Orban and Steve Howes drove into the Carlos mining camp on Grew Creek near the village of Ross River where the five-member Carlos family was working.

Carlos' vigorously expressed opinions led the RCMP to raid their nice Whitehorse home a year and a half later.

His conversation out in camp was with Howes. Yet it was Orban who filed a complaint with the police on January 19, 1999--five months after the imagined incident took place.

She accused Carlos of threatening to shoot any government people who came onto his mining property armed with guns.

In an affidavit as well as in his talk, Carlos denied ever voicing such a threat.

Howes backed up Carlos in two separate police interviews. "I don't remember him ever stating that he was going to shoot anybody," said Howes.

Hugh Copeland, engineer of mines for the federal mining land-use division, told the police he didn't feel threatened by Carlos.

The police gathered other statements from Tina Thomas and Leah Richardson, who were working in the office of the chief firearms officer.

Their depositions are peppered with their foul words while accusing Carlos of using crude language, which is not and never has been part of his vernacular.

In separate interviews, Thomas and Richardson said they felt threatened by Carlos, who had come into the office regarding a permit to carry a handgun.

It was determined in court that he had been issued permits to carry for the past 27 years, which is a good indicator he is not a threat to society.

In the police interview, Thomas was asked:

(If you felt threatened), "why didn't you call the police?"

Her response was: "It didn't even occur to me."

Territorial judge Heino Lilles signed the search warrant authorizing the police to raid the Carlos home on the basis that he was "a threat to public safety and to his family."

That accusation reflected on the character of Paula Carlos, who had a stern message for the police sitting behind her during the meeting.

She stood up and turned to face chief firearms officer Dan Otterbein, who was invited to attend the meeting. He was flanked protectively by two police officers. Other plainclothes officers were stationed around the room.

"To those police who are sitting here tonight, that confuses me," said Mrs. Carlos.

"Not only are you saying that about my husband, but what kind of a mother would I be if I put my children at risk for over a year and a half to live with someone who would hurt them?"

The police didn't respond but her remarks met with resounding applause as did Rogan's interjection.

"You must be real mean, Paula. You made the four police officers take off their shoes before they could come inside your house."

The police seized the family's gun collection and charged Carlos with three gun violations, which would never have happened if Orban had not lodged the original complaint.

The intentions behind her complaint will be fully scrutinized at a later date.

"My reaction to certain federal bureaucrats was not of a threatening nature," Carlos said in his speech.

"But it was in response to what these particular individuals represent. The growing intrusions by government agents in every aspect of our lives--social and economic--at times comes with an attitude."

He noted this same "attitude" has played a significant part in the reluctance of companies to invest capital in the Yukon to develop mineral properties.

That is a direct encroachment on his livelihood.

"One and one half years after an incident where I was alleged to have threatened someone, four members of the state police forced their way into our home to remove our firearms."

Later, fielding questions from the floor, he noted the police were not interested in his knives or axes, yet deemed him a threat to public safety.

"Imagine!" exclaimed Carlos. "The public safety at my mercy for one and one half years!"

During discussion, the audience heard that the investigating officers had testified in court that vacations (and shift rotations) had taken precedent over public safety.

That was their excuse for not seizing Carlos' guns earlier.

Carlos spoke of justice, for it is within the justice system that his fate now lies.

"Is it justice that I am not allowed to respond to allegations or never know for certain what they are?

"In essence, I am deemed guilty until I can somehow prove my innocence to such allegations."

The C-68 firearms law places guilt before innocence, rather than obliging the accuser to prove the defendant's guilt, he added.

"Is it justice when these same unsubstantiated allegations, highly embellished, are incorporated into an application for a search warrant bearing outright lies?

"Is it justice that I--the firearms owner--am dealt with under a more liberal search warrant than other citizenry?

"Is it justice that rather than charging me with a specific offence that (the police) would have to prove--that is, uttering threats--that they storm our home, find what they believe to be a storage infraction and forced us into court with such charges?"

One cannot imagine how smothering it feels when the state decides to sit on you, he said.

"Is it justice when they, on virtually unlimited resources of the state, bear upon me in such a manner--when that same state makes it increasingly difficult for me to earn a living to carry forth my dreams?"

"Is it just or fair that under the circumstances that my ability to protect myself or members of my family while in the wilds has been jeopardized? What of our safety?"

He found it disconcerting and frightening that the judicial system can pursue such ludicrous and invasive legislation with such a cold-hearted indifference.

"The police raid was totally unexpected, unfair, unwarranted," continued Carlos, noting the Canada he was born into on October 6, 1941, no longer exists.

He drew on the wisdom of Andrew Irvine, an associate professor of philosophy of the University of British Columbia and past president of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.

"No country is immune from the many pressures and tendencies that give rise to totalitarianism.

"It is by remaining indifferent to apparently small and incremental increases of state power that citizens eventually lose their most cherished freedoms.

"Even countries like Canada cannot afford to become complacent about their most fundamental rights and liberties."

In closing, Carlos read an excerpt from the letter of an 89-year-old man who fought for our freedoms during the Second World War.

On the enclosed cheque under memo were the words, "For Justice".

"Our government is following the exact footsteps of Germany in 1930," he wrote. "Those days are still vivid to me.

"We fought to be free of the menace and now our government is taking it all away. Why, is beyond me. I hope for the best."

When Carlos concluded his talk with a modest, "I thank you all," the room exploded with applause and a standing ovation as Mr. and Mrs. Carlos embraced.

During an enthusiastic discussion, Don McKay said it seemed to him that some of Carlos' troubles comes from speaking his mind and this is perhaps why he feels he was targeted.

"Some of us feel in a very shaky position," continued McKay, who drove a couple hundred miles from the village of Ross River to attend the fund-raiser for his long-time friend.

"If we're guilty of anything, it's the fact that we are passionate about the rights we think we have.

"Sometimes, when we go into a government office, or wherever, we find what we deem as total incompetence, or total lack of respect as taxpayers, we tend to get a little wild and crazy.

"Sometimes, we raise our voice, wave our hands around, jump up and down--sometimes we do all three at the same time."

"My nature," responded Carlos, who does not like authoritarian figures, "is to speak my mind. As we all know, we have an inordinate number of them here in the Yukon. If I were to have lived in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, I would have been that person who was the first target for the Gulag."

"I would have been guilty by association with you, Al," offered Barrie Ledoux, whose remark met with loud applause.

Ledoux, who formerly served as a justice of the peace, was troubled about how easy it was for the police to obtain that search warrant.

"There has to be reasonable and probable grounds to believe you did something wrong in order for a magistrate or a justice of the peace to issue a warrant for a search procedure.

"There had to be a process. I'm looking for whether the process was correct," added Ledoux, who turned his attention to the RCMP officers in the room.

"Unless things have changed, am I correct in saying that the process is still in place? You have to have an information laid and reasonable and probable grounds laid to exercise that? Is that correct?"

"That's correct," admitted an unidentified police officer.

Ledoux turned back to Carlos at the podium.

"Somebody screwed up, obviously."

"When this case is finished, Carlos promised he would have more to say about what he knows but is not a liberty to discuss at this time.

The final written submissions for the Carlos case were filed on public record by defence lawyer Richard Fritze and Crown prosecutor David McWhinnie last September.

Carlos was acquitted of all counts of storage infractions; the Crown appealed. He was acquitted again in a 2-to-1 vote by a three-judge panel. The Crown has appealed the case to the Supreme Court of Canada. It is expected to be heard on April 17. The pricetag will range from $50,000 to $80,000 plus to defend.

A trust fund for Allen Carlos has been set up at the Bank of Montreal, Whitehorse, account number 8075-985. All donations to the account will be gratefully accepted. For more information, please contact Paul Rogan, president of the Responsible Firearms Owners Coalition in Whitehorse, Yukon, at 1-867-668-5609, or e-mail him at firearms@yukon.net.

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