Charges against a 24-year-old man caught with a loaded handgun at a Burnaby SkyTrain station have been dismissed because police violated his charter rights, according to a Vancouver judge.
Mateo Zanatta was on a curfew and under multiple firearms bans in March 2023 when Metro Vancouver Transit Police approached him on a Millennium Line train at about 1:20 a.m. to check his fare, according to information presented in court.
After Zanatta acknowledged he didn't have a ticket, police ended up detaining, questioning, searching – and ultimately arresting him when a search of his backpack turned up a Glock 19 semi-automatic pistol with a 15-round overcapacity magazine and six live rounds.
In court, however, Zanatta's lawyer argued the detention, questioning, searches and arrest had violated his charter rights and the gun should, therefore, be excluded as evidence.
B.C. provincial court Judge Patricia Bond agreed.
On Tuesday, she ruled the gun was not admissible as evidence because police had obtained it by violating Zanatta's right not to be arbitrarily detained, his right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure and his right to talk to a lawyer without delay.
Bond said the charter breaches by the arresting officer – 20-year veteran Const. J. Chow – were not fleeting or technical but "reckless" and "serious."
"Considering the scope of these breaches in these circumstances, I find they are more in the nature of a flagrant disregard for the accused charter rights which raises concerns that the officer has probably engaged in similar conduct with others over the years of his service," Bond said.
The Crown had argued the gun would have been found even if police had complied with the charter, but Bond said that argument would have required her to speculate.
Citing previous cases, Bond said firearms offence are serious, but "short term public clamour" for a conviction should not "deafen" judges to the longer term repute of the justice system.
"I find that to admit the gun in the face of the breaches would send the message that, when the charges are serious, individual rights count for little," Bond said.
In Zanatta's case, she concluded police had deprived the accused of the charter's intended protections.
"I find that this case as a whole supports the exclusion of the evidence," Bond said. "The breaches were serious individually and all the more serious when viewed cumulatively as every facet of the investigation was unconstitutional."
Immediately after Bond's decision Tuesday, the Crown ended its case, and the charges against Zanatta were dismissed.
Zanatta has spent 463 days in pretrial custody on the firearms charges, according to the B.C. Prosecution Service.
During most of that time, he was also in jail on drug charges out of New Westminster going back to November 2022.
He remains in custody on that file.
Follow Cornelia Naylor on X/Twitter @CorNaylor
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