Homeless Regina man spent 21 months in jail after illegal search

A homeless Regina man was found to be not guilty of several criminal charges after a judge ruled his arrest was unlawful and a police search of his vehicle was unconstitutional.

But between his arrest and the ruling, the man spent 21 months behind bars.

“The police might not have acted in bad faith, but their conduct certainly was brazen,” Provincial Court Judge James Rybchuk said in his written decision. “They displayed ignorance or carelessness towards basic Charter rights and standards.”

In May of 2021, police responded to a 911 call about a man sleeping in a car in the private parking lot of a gas station on Arcola Avenue.

According to court documents, police surrounded the car with multiple police vehicles and shone spotlights and flashlights inside to wake the man up. Multiple officers then removed him from the vehicle, handcuffed him and placed him in the back of a police car where he was interrogated while officers combed through his vehicle.

That search, according to the decision, turned up “a half-full mickey bottle of vodka, a bottle of whiskey, three cell phones, an RCA tablet, a box cutter, a folding knife, a knife in a sheath, an axe and a nine-millimetre Browning handgun with a loaded magazine.” As a result, the decision noted, nine criminal charges were laid against the man.

In a decision dated Feb. 10 of this year, Rybchuk ruled that the search was illegal, as police had no reason to believe any crime was committed and the only information they had was that a person was sleeping in a vehicle on private property.

The search, Rybchuk wrote in his decision, “was done without any valid, articulatable cause, thus there was no grounds to arrest the accused and search the accused’s vehicle incident to arrest.”

Rybchuk was critical of the conduct of the Regina police officers involved in the incident throughout his decision, noting police continued to question the man even after he repeatedly requested to speak with a lawyer.

“The officers were of the view that they could immediately detain the accused and search his vehicle parked on private property without grounds, simply because someone had reported that a car had been parked there for some time with a person inside. The police did not receive a report of a crime in progress or that a crime was about to be committed,” the judge wrote.

“A police badge is not a free pass to enter onto and search private property whenever and however the police want. The homeless accused had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his vehicle parked on private property and the police conduct was too authoritative and domineering in this case.”

The judgment noted the man spent 21 months in the cells of the Regina Correctional Centre. The only thing he owned was his car, the judge noted, and that was towed and impounded by police.

Ultimately, Rybchuk ruled that all of the evidence collected during the illegal search could not be used in court and, as there was no admissible evidence supporting the criminal charges against the man, he was found to be not guilty.