“Domestically-Sourced” RCMP Firearm Almost Costs 16-Year-Old Girl Her Life

Hundreds of firearms are stolen from police every year and the RCMP no longer tracks them. While civilians routinely face charges for improper storage, police officers don’t.

Canadian police love to blame criminal shootings on “domestically-sourced” firearms. What they don’t tell us is many of those “domestically-sourced” guns are coming from police cruisers. Worse, they don’t even keep track of how many guns are stolen from police.

August 8, 2018, Saskatoon, SK. A man broke into a parked RCMP cruiser and stole a police-issued handgun and ammunition.

May 7, 2018, Calgary, AB. A thief broke into a Calgary Police Service recruit’s truck and stole her gear bag, including a locked case containing her training pistol and three (prohibited) 15-round magazines.

April 26, 2018, Kenora, ON. A man stole a rifle, an AR-15, from a marked Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) cruiser.

April 4, 2015, Calgary, AB. A thief broke into a Calgary police constable’s personal vehicle and stole his Colt C8 semi-automatic patrol carbine (a politically correct name for an AR-15) and two spare (prohibited) magazines.

“There is no reason in my mind why an officer would take this firearm home,” Calgary Police Superintendent Kevan Stuart told Global News shortly after the theft.

“Sometime after Oct. 23, 2013.” A man stole an OPP-issued Sig Sauer P229 handgun and three (prohibited) magazines from the trunk of a detective’s vehicle. The detective has no idea when the gun was stolen but did not report the theft until December 12, 2013. While Ottawa police notified the OPP about the stolen gun 17 days earlier, they did not start their investigation until the detective reported it.

Thankfully, in most cases when police firearms are stolen, nobody is injured –– but that’s not always the case.

On October 24, 2015, a man broke into an RCMP vehicle parked in Winnipeg RCMP Sgt. Christopher McCuen’s driveway, stole his loaded duty handgun and shot 16-year-old Calli Vanderaa in the chest. She recovered from the serious physical damage, but still suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression.

Winnipeg police said they “found no grounds” to charge Sgt. McCuen with improper storage of a weapon.

Calli Vanderaa filed a negligence lawsuit against McCuen and the RCMP for her pain and suffering.

In their motion to have the lawsuit dismissed, McCuen and the RCMP claimed they do not owe Calli Vanderaa and her father “a prima facie private law duty of care.”

This suggests they believe:

they don’t have a legal duty or are immune from the legal requirement to safely store police firearms, and
they aren’t responsible if their improperly stored firearms are stolen and used to in violent crimes

Access to Information (ATIP) requests show 124 firearms and other weapons were lost or stolen from the RCMP from January 1 to June 3, 2015.

RCMP documents obtained by Dennis Young in 2011 showed 428 firearms were lost or stolen from our police forces. In 2017 he repeated his information request.

The RCMP said they no longer keep track of them.

Sources:

“Domestically-Sourced” RCMP Firearm Almost Costs 16-Year-Old Girl Her Life

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