Naeema Siddiqua, Spruce Grove, Alberta (Grove Examiner) – Police are calling it an unfortunate error after entering the wrong house during a drug bust on the Enoch Cree First Nation on Monday.
According to Crpl. Wayne Oakes with RCMP K Division, Stony Plain RCMP officers were equipped with a search warrant of a suspected drug house in the remote rural area when they realized they had the wrong house.
“It was a very remote area – there were no house numbers, or street numbers,” explained Crpl. Oakes.
“We don’t like to have mistakes like this, but unfortunately they do happen sometimes.”
The Stony Plain RCMP Detachment commander has since spoken with the head of the household that was entered in error and offered a heartfelt apology.
They are reviewing the incident to determine what factors may have contributed to the error.
Because the investigation is still ongoing into the
original warrant, Oakes was unable to reveal too many details.
However, once police found the right house, which Oakes said wasn’t too far from the first home, police seized a substantial amount of drugs from the premises.
No arrests have been made in connection with the seizure and RCMP continue to investigate.
Sounds like we are pretty well in agreement on this one DT. Rural RCMP (OPP, SQ, etc.) detachments do see a high turnover in rotation of officers. So if the local volunteer fire department cannot find your place in an emergency, neither can your provincial police detachment.
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Indeed MS. I really do not have a problem with someone who refuses to put out his address or identifiers. However, with that established I expect the negative results, such as misdirection of the fire department, search and rescue, or police due to such non compliance, to solely be with the “libertarian”, etc.
My refrain to them would be: do not whine, snivel, sue, chastise or otherwise blame somebody else for your lack of foresight. Especially in the cases you mention where the local populace is a voluntary force for such duties as firefighting, search and rescue etc.
I would expect the rotation of rural police officers would make it very difficult for them to learn where everybody lives off every back road, or cow path, especially without some form of markers.
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If you want a plan to go off perfectly, watch Mission: Impossible reruns. The real world doesn’t work that way. I agree with you on those points DT.
A friend of mine was involved in a volunteer fire department in B.C.’s central interior. It was a small force on a lake and its membership consisted of a mixtture of summer residents and permanent residents (and many of those people were retired) and participation was largely voluntary with money raised by the locals with some support from the regional district (who’s own fire-fighting resources were stretched pretty thinly and the Forestry Ministry. I know of a number of such organizations in rural B.C.
He was telling me that in their section of the regional deistrict, they had a devil of a time trying to convince people to put there addresses out on the road. He found out, in talking with the local RCMP, ambulance services, and conservation officer, that this was a long-standing problem. “Everyone knows where I live!” seemed to be a constant refrain. The district (or the province) could force people to put their addresses out on the road, but do not want to get into a fight with somewhat libertarian and ornery rural types, I guess.
Eventually, they convinced most of the people in their fire-fighting area to put their adresses on the road so that the fire truck was going to the right place and not down a long driveway to a vacant lot!
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Police work is not a nice and clean business and as with all human endeavors, mistakes are indeed made. The move to use tactical teams instead of regular police officers stemmed from alleged “bungled” raids where persons on both sides were injured or killed. The hand wringing and need to “do something” prompted by both sides of the equation gave rise to the increased use of tactical intervention.
The one thing that is for certain is that despite the dozens of pages in a search warrant, the endless grounds in obtaining them increasing, and the best laid plans with specialized units, there will always be some instances where things go awry. Those that look for perfection in this sort of situation are basically dreaming.
I would speculate that on a per capita, time related basis, that there are less residence searches now that in decades past.
With respect to those rural addresses, I wonder what the specific use of GPS, or satellite imagery, would stir in the loins of the civil rights groups?
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Larry Young? He was the VPD ERT member who was shot by a coked-up cocaine dealer wasn’t he? That was a tragedy.
My point was that mistakes do happen and this one could have been a lot worse. This is one of those “dammned if they do, dammned if they don’t” areas for all police. After that bungled raid I mentioned, the U.S. media debated whether drug raids should be conducted by police tactical teams and some departments began second-guessing their raid policies.
Having spent time in rural B.C., I know how hard it is to find an address sometimes.
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Are you glad you do not live in the US? Mind you with the weak kneed response from the legal system to the gang problem we wont be far behind.
Sgt Larry Young was killed while raiding the right house. Sometimes the fates are negative.
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This is very embarassing for the Mounties and its too bad it happend on a Cree First Nation reserve, given the somewhat fragile relationship the RCMP has with Canada’s First Nations. But no one got killed; a similar story occured in some inner-city ghetto in the USA about a year or so ago and the home owner mistook the SWAT team for armed thugs and shot at them and was (of course) subsequently shot dead. It think it was in St Pauls (some big city in the midwest). So the perils of showing up at the wrong house when conducting a drug raid are somewhat universal.
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