Ex-RCMP officer fined for poaching while on duty

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This article was published 01/09/2023 (795 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A former Manitoba RCMP constable has been fined $5,000, after he admitted to poaching wild game while on duty.

Karl Tabares-Chevarie, 35, was returning to his detachment in Oxford House around 9 p.m., March 14, 2022, after work-related duties in Thompson, when he pulled over on a winter road and used his police-issue rifle to fire three shots at a caribou.

Tabares-Chevarie missed the animal, with two rounds instead hitting the box of his police pickup truck.

“The idea that an officer being paid by the public to drive out in an RCMP vehicle while on duty with a prohibited police firearm, jumping out of his truck and poaching a caribou, doing that all on the company dime is unappetizing, to say the least,” Crown attorney Mike Desautels told provincial court Judge Sidney Lerner at a sentencing hearing Thursday.

“To me as a taxpayer and to the public and the Crown, the idea that was palatable or somehow seemed like a good idea to him in any way … All of this is disappointing to say the very least.”

Tabares-Chevarie pleaded guilty to one count of hunting without a licence. An additional count of careless use of a firearm was stayed by the Crown.

Under the Wildlife Act, the maximum fine for hunting without a licence is $25,000. The average fine is $465, Desautels said.

“Now the average Joe Blow also has his truck seized and his gun seized,” he said. “That obviously wasn’t the case here.”

Caribou weren’t open to hunting at the time, except to Indigenous hunters, court heard.

Tabares-Chevarie, an experienced hunter, immediately called his RCMP corporal to say he had “f—-ed up” and had shot at a caribou, with the intention of splitting the meat with an Indigenous conservation officer.

The Crown only had a case against Tabares-Chevarie because he was honest and disclosed the incident to his superior, Desautels said.

“There were no witnesses,” he said. “He could have said, ‘I don’t know how that happened,’ but you might imagine in that community and that area, undisclosed rounds entering his vehicle, there would be a massive police and public outcry.

“So, this officer did the right thing, and he is to be credited.”

Tabares-Chevarie spent his entire adult life serving his country and community; as a member of the Canadian Armed Forces, beginning as a teen and including two tours in Afghanistan, and four years with the RCMP, defence lawyer Kristen Jones said.

During his time in Oxford House, Tabares-Chevarie acted as a “bridge” between police and northern Manitoba community members, strengthening relations through his community involvement and providing meat from wild game he hunted.

“Food scarcity is very much a reality in the North. The cost of food is very much problematic in the North and that is one of the ways he was able to build relationships in the community, be able to help support and provide for the community beyond his policing role,” Jones said.

Tabares-Chevarie, who lives with post-traumatic stress disorder and is on permanent disability for injuries suffered in Afghanistan, said at the time of the incident he had already submitted the paperwork to retire from the RCMP.

“I knew it was time for me to walk away from the tireless task of being a police officer, before my body and my mind reached a point of no return,” he told court.

Tabares-Chevarie apologized to the people he had “disappointed,” with his “unfortunate decision,” saying he was motivated by a desire to help feed his adopted community.

“It became clear to me that so many people in Oxford House were suffering from poor physical health and could barely afford good basic food — that is why I became involved in hunting and why it was such a great joy to provide harvest and meat to the people of Oxford House,” he said.

“I should have known better, I should have done better. I’m deeply sorry.”

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca