Estacade project: acquitted even though he had 31 kilos of cocaine at home
A judge of the Court of Quebec rendered a decision Tuesday that could have a significant impact on the ways of doing police investigators specialized in the fight against organized crime and narcotics. She excluded from the evidence the discovery of 31 kilograms of cocaine at a Montreal office in October 2016 because the police broke down the man's door and searched his home before obtaining a warrant.
During the investigation, the police officers listened to Scoppa and his alleged accomplices. They followed Malatesta noted that he went into a slot on the 13 th Avenue in Montreal, since he had exchanged a bag with the tenant and suspected that it was a drug cache of the organization of Scoppa.
On October 26, 2016, investigators arrested Malatesta and Scoppa in the parking lot of the Canadian Tour in downtown Montreal and found more than 70 kilograms of cocaine in the first car.
A judge of the Court of Quebec rendered a decision Tuesday ... (CAPTURE OF SCREEN) - image 2.0 Enlarge SCREENSHOT
The head of the investigation then was - in 11h11- given the green light for the Emergency Response Team (ERT) between dynamically in the housing of the 13 th .
Intrigued, a policeman went into the room and saw recyclable bags similar to those found in the Malatesta vehicle. He lifted plastic bottles from the top of the bags, and opened a trash bag, noticing a package that looked like a kilo of cocaine. The police then asked for a search warrant that they obtained at 4:30 pm.
A call to order
During the proceedings, the lead investigator explained that after the unexpected arrests of Malatesta and Scoppa, he found it urgent to act. He then ordered the dynamic entry without a warrant on 13 th Avenue before the news of the arrests of Scoppa and Malatesta broke out, to prevent evidence - cocaine - from being destroyed.
But Judge Linda Despots concluded that there was no urgency to act. She asks why, if IWG members already knew they could intervene at 6:40 on 13 th Avenue, the head of the investigation was not from that time, asked for a search warrant. She finds that the police had reason to believe that drugs could be found there and that the conditions for obtaining judicial authorization were met. It recognizes that these are serious offenses and that cocaine is wreaking havoc on society. She does not doubt the good faith of the police but blame them for their ways.
"The Tribunal, while aware of the hard work of the police when confronted with investigations into organized crime, is concerned that this type of entry, without a warrant, into a dwelling house accompanied by a dynamic entrance become almost routine, given the danger inherent in the type of investigation. As such, because search execution principles are presumed to be known to police officers, the Tribunal finds that the seriousness of state conduct is important. "
"A dwelling house is a place where the expectation of privacy is surely the most important. The Tribunal notes the intrusiveness of the intrusion and finds an impact on the rights of the accused. Despite the company's definite interest in having the case heard on the merits, the Tribunal, in analyzing all the criteria, can only find that the police officers acted contrary to the established rules and have been many years, "writes Judge Despots.
Scoppa, Malatesta and another co-accused, Nicola Valiente, benefited from a stay of proceedings in September 2018 after Pursuit filed a nolle prosequi without explanation.
