An accused drug dealer won a ruling that two warrants the Ridge Meadows RCMP used to investigate him, as part of the detachment’s largest-ever fentanyl seizure, were unlawful.
Alen Kadunic was charged with multiple counts of possession for the purpose of trafficking in the Maple Ridge drug investigation, but asserted his charter rights were breached, and successfully had evidence excluded.
He was charged in early 2023, after a multi-jurisdictional drug bust that resulted in the historic seizure. More than seven kilograms of various narcotics, guns and thousands of dollars in cash were seized from New Westminster and Maple Ridge residences. Also charged were April Dawn Fraser and Daniel Kawaguchi Johnson.
Fraser was charged with nine counts of trafficking, Kadunic faced eight trafficking charges, and Johnson with one count.
Two warrants issued on Nov. 18, 2021 were unlawful, because they lacked reasonable grounds, Justice David Layton ruled on April 7, after a hearing in New Westminster Supreme Court.
One of the warrants permitted police to install a transmission data recorder on a cell phone, while another warrant allowed the RCMP to track him using the phone. Because the warrants were unlawful, so were resulting searches, breaching Kadunic’s Charter rights that protect against unreasonable search and seizure, the court found.
Both of the warrants were issued by a provincial court justice based on an information to obtain (ITO) sworn by a Ridge Meadows RCMP officer with the Street Enforcement Unit (SEU). But Justice Layton found there was materially misleading information in that ITO, and a “major inaccuracy that presented the issuing justice with a substantially skewed picture…”
In June 2021, the SEU started a drug trafficking investigation into Derek Kilimnik in Maple Ridge. In carrying out surveillance as part of this investigation, police allege they saw Kilimnik meet with April Fraser on July 22, 2021, and she transferred a large hockey-style bag from her vehicle to a vehicle in which Kilimnik had been a passenger.
On three dates in October, 2021, undercover officers purchased fentanyl and cocaine by calling to arrange sales. Fraser allegedly made one sale, and a vehicle registered to her was used for another sale.
After those transactions, the judge granted an order to install a transmission data recorder on a phone used by Fraser.
Police called the phone four times in October and November of 2021 to purchase fentanyl and cocaine, three times from Fraser, said police.
The officer who arranged the deals obtained a new phone number, that she believed Fraser had used to call her boss, to authorize a drug deal.
It was that number that was the “subject of the impugned transmission data recorder and tracking warrants,” he decision said.
The ruling will impact the Crown’s case against Kadunic, who is next to appear in court on April 27.