Guilty plea for fleeing, injuring officer

Two officers in uniform drove after Aydt, following previous orders to pursue and affect an arrest if Aydt “went mobile.” Those directions came from Saskatchewan Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit (CFSEU) member, Cst. Phil Dell.

After Aydt pulled over and Cst. Brock Acorn and Cst. Darren Androsoff had left their police SUV and yelled “stop, you’re under arrest,” Aydt drove away.

In that process, one officer was hit by a trailer behind the truck, and another was dragged momentarily by the truck, according to a police news release at the time.

A member of CFSEU who’d been driving behind the officers witnessed this.

Aydt was stopped after fleeing, and he and his passenger were arrested following that.

In court, physical evidence was also put forward. This included a bundle of $1,550 and a brown bag with three individual baggies with 77.3 grams total of cocaine inside.

Those items were found metres from where the truck eventually stopped, Cst. Jordan Hamm, who had been an officer with CFSEU for two years at that time, testified.

He also testified that a bundle of $731 was found in Aydt’s front right shorts pocket.

Was the initial arrest lawful?

All this evidence was deemed admissible after arguments were made to exclude some of it based on an application saying Aydt’s rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms were breached.

The breach stemmed from an unlawful arrest by the uniformed officers, Aydt’s defence counsel Jack Hillson argued.

The arguments for and against that shed light on how much work goes behind drug investigations, including the cultivation of sources.

The court heard that the source Cst. Phil Dell received information from on Sept. 6, 2013 had been deemed reliable.

Seven times out of nine in the past, police were able to act on the information provided by the source Dell spoke to that day.

Following that, he found out a separate unit, the Integrated Street Enforcement Team (ISET), was also looking into Aydt’s criminal activity and planned to execute a search warrant that day.

One source had said Aydt was “loaded up” with cocaine and would be selling all weekend, provincial Crown prosecutor Gail Douglas said. In total, six sources said essentially the same thing, although not all were reliable, she told the court.

Within three hours of the initial informant speaking to Dell, officers acquired a search warrant for Aydt’s home and had a plan to execute it but did not have a warrant for Aydt’s arrest. Douglas submitted that was a short time to plan.

Justice B.J. Sherman asked numerous questions based on Hillson’s arguments.

Many of them were potential situations. For example, even without the search warrant for the home, had Dell encountered Aydt by chance in downtown Prince Albert, would Dell have cause to arrest him?

Hillson said none of those situations fit, because the officers had formulated a plan before they executed their search.

Following those arguments, Sherman made his ruling on whether any evidence should be excluded.

He said he was satisfied that there was reasonable grounds for arresting Aydt for possession of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking.

Sherman said there was an unlawful arrest, but on the spectrum of charter breaches it wasn’t egregious because officers believed they had the right to affect an arrest.

For that reason, he deemed all of the evidence admissible.

That ruling was made on Wednesday morning, and Aydt’s guilty pleas came when court resumed on Wednesday afternoon.

Aydt will remain on the recognizance he was released on in 2013 until his Sept. 28 sentencing.

He isn’t in custody.

claskowski@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @chelsealaskowsk

by Chelsea Laskowski

Guilty plea for fleeing, injuring officer

What's Trending