Policing the Fringe. Charles Scheideman

the right rear tire had I been in possession of a better firearm. Neither the issue handgun nor ammunition of that time was effective, and combined they were a bad joke. There were many superior firearm and ammunition combinations available but at that time the upper echelons of the Mounted Police were still looking for a nicer way to shoot someone.

      Our prisoner had somewhat regained his composure by the time the car reached our lock-up in Golden. By then he was reciting the standard suspect line of, “I refuse to say anything until I have talked to a lawyer.” One of the members who had not been involved in the chase took him aside and advised him he would be held in custody until we were able to take him before a court the next day. He was offered the use of the telephone, but declined. Judging by our observations of his driving and his actions at the arrest, we were all of the opinion that we should have his marbles counted. We warned our civilian prisoner guard to be extremely careful with this man and to watch for a possible suicide. He was not to be let out of the cell unless there was a policeman present.

      During the day that he was in our cells, his mood varied from hour to hour. He frequently screamed and ranted and rocked the cell cage like a madman. At other times he would engage in calm conversations with some of us or our cell guard. Apparently, he had been a student at a large U.S. university until he decided to drive home to eastern Canada. We were not able to learn when his psychosis began or what, if anything, may have contributed to it.

      Court in Golden in those days was normally held on Saturday mornings and Wednesday evenings. Our lay judge who presided at the scheduled court was a school principal, which necessitated the unusual hours. Most of our local clients appreciated the somewhat unusual court hours because they did not have to take time away from their work to deal with relatively routine brushes with the law.

      Our prisoner ranted and visited and yelled and slept and rocked the cell cage over the hours until the evening of the next day when we arranged for him to appear before the local court. The usual Wednesday evening court started at seven. I did not have a long list that evening so I asked two of the constables to very cautiously move the prisoner to court after I had dealt with the few routine matters. By arranging his court appearance that way we would not have an audience in the event our client lost control of himself, as I suspected he would. The court location was about one mile from the police building, so the prisoner had to be moved in a police car.

      The magistrate and I dealt with the routine matters and had everyone out of the court building before seven thirty. The two constables brought the prisoner in and we presented him to the court. Our client became very rational and calm. He asked to have the handcuffs removed so that he could write notes. I raised an objection to this but the magistrate decided to grant his request after cautioning the prisoner that there were three relatively large police officers there who would without doubt put the cuffs on again by whatever means were necessary. The prisoner promised to behave.

      The hearing began with me reading the charges and requesting the accused be remanded in custody for psychiatric assessment due to the serious nature of the charges and because he was transient. I then tried to briefly outline the circumstances of the chase and capture. I was only able to start the narrative of the event when our prisoner lost his carefully demonstrated control. In an instant he went totally wild. He screamed and kicked and fought with the three of us briefly until we were again able to cuff his hands together. We sat him on a chair and held him there while the magistrate tried, without success, to ask him a few questions about the recent happenings. Communication with the man was now impossible and the magistrate soon gave up and granted the requested adjournment in custody.

      We now had our prisoner cuffed with his hands in front rather than the more effective placement behind his back. The two constables escorted him out of the courtroom and down a flight of stairs to the back door where the police car was parked just outside. Just as the three of them went through the doors I heard a scuffle, and one of the policemen yelled something about a gun. I bounded down the stairs and through the doors in time to see the prisoner kneeling on the landing with a holstered police handgun in his handcuffed hands, intent on opening the holster.

      This vision was very brief because one of the constables came down across the prisoner like a football tackle. This constable weighed around two hundred and fifty pounds and had tried out for the Saskatchewan Roughriders before joining the Mounted Police. The prisoner was quite flat and the still-holstered handgun squirted out from under the two bodies. I later learned that the prisoner had lunged at one of the members as they went through the door, grabbed the holstered handgun on his belt, and heaved on it with all his weight. The swivel attachment to the waist belt gave way and the prisoner then had the holstered firearm in his hands. The safety catch on the holster slowed him just long enough to save someone from being shot.

      I assisted the two constables with changing the cuff position so the prisoner’s hands were behind him, and he was soon safely into the back of the police vehicle. They drove back to the cells and I returned to the courtroom to wrap up the last paperwork of the evening. I stayed at the court for a while and then the magistrate and I stopped at a local coffee shop for a short time. I returned to the police office about eight thirty to find an ambulance there. When I went in, the prisoner was lying dead on the floor in the cellblock. The ambulance crew had been unable to revive him and had just given up their efforts.

      The prisoner had once again collected his wits during the short ride from the court to the cells. He spoke civilly to the two officers and even joked about being able to grab the revolver from one of them. He ventured the opinion that there were no rules for the game they were playing and that they had clearly won that round, even though it had been close. He had a large drink of water from the fountain in the cellblock and asked if someone could get him a sandwich. He offered to pay for the sandwich with money from his effects since it was not a regular meal time.

      The prisoner was returned to the horrible cage that we had for a cell. The standard cages were fabricated from sturdy steel straps about one inch wide which were riveted at every intersection to form square openings of about four inches. The frame of the cage was made from heavy angle iron; the floor was sheet steel, welded and riveted to create an almost watertight bottom. Fluid, mainly urine, would seep under the cages, which were far too heavy to be moved for cleaning. Each cage had an upper and lower bunk, again of sheet steel and angle iron. A thin, plastic-covered mattress and a blanket were provided if the prisoner did not vandalize them.

      The prisoner chatted with the constables and the guard as he was again booked into the cell, not objecting to the routine search of his person and clothing. He removed his shoes and belt when requested. Before the guard left the cell room, the prisoner was lying on the bottom bunk as though he intended to go to sleep.

      Twenty minutes later, when the guard looked through the small observation window in the cell room door, he could see that something was not as it should be. The guard yelled for assistance and ran to get one key to access the room and another to open the large padlock on the cage door. Another constable was in the office at the time and he attended at the cell with the guard. They found the prisoner hanging from the lattice top of the cage. He had removed his trousers and run a leg over one of the steel straps of the cage roof so that one leg of the pants hung down on each side of the strap. He then sat on the top bunk and pressed the back of his neck tightly under the point where the pant legs hung down and tied a very solid square knot under his chin. He slid his buttocks off the edge of the bunk and hung by his throat.

      The guard and the constable struggled to take the prisoner down, but they were unable to raise his limp body enough to untie the tight knot in the pant legs. The constable ran to another part of the office and got a knife; however, he could not work with the knife inside the cage because he could not cut the trousers without also cutting the hanging body. There was about a ten-inch space between the top of the cage and the ceiling of the room. The constable managed to squeeze himself into that space and he began to hack at the cloth of the trousers. Finally the body was lowered to the floor and taken out of the cage. An ambulance had been called for by a radio message to a car patrolling in the town. The ambulance arrived about the time the body was cut down, but there were no indications of pulse or breathing in the body and none was restored by attempts at cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

      The coroner’s inquest ruled that the death