More than a hundred “knife cards” (thin as a credit card), a stun gun (Taser), brass knuckles, “a cane-sword”, pepper spray and drugs of all kinds. These are some of the items seized from the personal effects of those who showed up at the six largest courthouses in the province since 2016.
Posted at 7:00 a.m.
It was following an access to information request that The Press obtained from the Ministry of Public Security the list of all the objects that have been seized over the years from courthouses. On consulting it, it is clear that a good number of defendants, witnesses or simple visitors are unaware that they will be the subject of a search or think that they will be able to thwart both the security guards and the radiation devices. X and metal detection installed in entrances.
In addition to knives of all kinds, methamphetamine tablets, meth pipes and cannabis (which is only legally sold at the Société québécoise du cannabis) are regularly seized. The list of objects intercepted also includes “a bullet”, “a cane-dagger”, a “half-joint”, a syringe of morphine, “casings of 22”, heroin, cans of beer, pipes crack, etc.
Possible lawsuits
As indicated by M.e Audrey Roy-Cloutier, Acting Deputy Chief Prosecutor and Spokesperson for the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions, when special constables seize articles whose possession is prohibited by law, they may, after investigation, “transmit a file to the DPCP so that an analysis is made by a prosecutor who will determine whether a prosecution should be instituted and the charges to be filed, if applicable”.
Me Roy-Cloutier explains that there are no specific offenses in the Criminal Code for possession of prohibited items in a courthouse, but that could be considered at sentencing.
For example, possessing a prohibited weapon in the courthouse could be considered an aggravating circumstance in favor of a harsher sentence.
Me Roy Cloutier
Me Jean-Claude Hébert, a lawyer specializing in criminal law, believes that “you have to be awfully carefree” to walk around a courthouse with weapons or prohibited items.
People who arrive with knives at the courthouse, for example, are so used to having them with them that they don’t even think about them anymore.
Me Jean-Claude Hebert
Not impossible either, in his opinion, that some do it on purpose, “out of bravado”, to try to outsmart the system or to demonstrate that they are doing what they want, courthouse or not.
Even if someone managed to bring an illegal object into these places, he would still have to thwart the many “very discreet” security cameras that are everywhere, he continues.
An evil person, he observes, “would really soon be identified.”
“Knife cards,” frequently seized at courthouses, were also intercepted by the hundreds at Canadian airports beginning around 2015. Less than 30 centimeters long, these cards can hide a blade or a knife.
With William Leclerc