POLICE JUMPING THE GUN

Critics Blame Magistrates, Tipsters For Errant Raids

OVERZEALOUS police? Bad informants? Lazy magistrates?

It's possible a combination of all three is behind two recent police raids
in Winnipeg that apparently wrongly targeted law-abiding citizens,
according to police sources and other players in Manitoba's criminal
justice system.

Because both raids -- one a search for a supposed illegal handgun on
Atlantic Avenue and the other for a hydroponic dope grow operation in
Elmwood -- are now the subjects of complaints to the province's Law
Enforcement Review Agency, Winnipeg police are not commenting publicly on
either.

However, the two raids have caused the force some embarrassment and left it
open to criticism that officers acted too hastily without first confirming
what they were told by informants.

"Informants are notoriously unreliable," said University of Winnipeg
criminologist Doug Skoog.

Privately, police say they continually get tips from informants, and act on
them accordingly. Many gang and drug-related arrests originate from the
tips of informants, who are trading information to get off on lighter
criminal charges or tipping off police about someone for personal reasons,
or for money. "In 85 to 90 per cent of the time, the information we get
from informants is accurate," a police source said. "Sometimes, it is not,
and there is not much we can do about it. Life's like that sometimes."

Once police get what they think is a solid tip, there is a strict process
officers must follow to get a search warrant from a magistrate to enter a
private residence. Hearings by police to obtain warrants are done behind
closed doors.

As outlined in the Criminal Code of Canada, a judge or magistrate must be
satisfied there are reasonable and probable grounds to believe an offence
can be uncovered by a police search.

The problem is that magistrates don't always go that extra mile in
questioning police about the veracity of a tip, said local criminal lawyer
Saul Simmonds.

"You can't just issue a warrant because a police officer is asking for
one," Simmonds said. "(But) 99 per cent of warrants are issued without a
scintilla of resistance."

Simmonds said sometimes police act too quickly on a tip, without doing
enough background investigation or surveillance work to verify the
informant's information. "There has been a huge number of warrants
authorized that have not met the proper test," Simmonds said. "The problem
is we rarely hear about how many fruitless searches there are."

Simmonds said Winnipeggers have only heard about the most recent searches
because the subjects felt their privacy had been violated and contacted the
media.

In the first Winnipeg case, police raided the home of Walter Cerros, a
machine shop plant manager, and his wife, Sandra Horyski-Cerros, on Sunday
morning looking for an illegal 7-mm handgun. The family and their
nine-year-old son Nicholas were removed a gunpoint from their home for
about three hours. Police did not find the weapon, but an officer
accidentally discharged a sidearm when he tripped in a bathroom that was
under renovation.

Sandra Horyski-Cerros, a Neighbourhood Watch captain on her block, said
after the raid an officer told her police had received an anonymous phone tip.

At the Elmwood raid Monday night, Grant Andrusky, a trucker, came home to
find plainclothes officers in his rental home looking for a marijuana grow
operation. He thought they were burglars and was preparing to defend his
property when they pulled guns and said they were police. Police found no
marijuana.

Yesterday, Lusted Avenue resident Tony Ammann said he was rousted from his
bed March 7 by police also looking for a marijuana grow operation.

"There was nothing here at all," he said. "I was kind of bothered a bit.
They're supposed to be protecting me, but they used a battering ram to
break down my door."