“Gating” — the first ever documented case?

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/03/2014 (4283 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s been interesting watching (and hearing, sometimes directly and loudly) the strong reaction to the "gating" controversy that’s erupted in Manitoba in recent days.

If anything, it’s generated a lot of debate, awareness and attention towards the province’s arrest-warrant backlog problem, police workload issues, and issues of procedural fairness for suspects in our courts and jails. 

I won’t belabour things by reciting various reports outlining the practice and the issues it raises.

You can get caught up in five to 20 minutes by starting here, then going here, reading here, here and here and then checking out more on it in the Free Press in coming days.

Others, like former WPS Sgt. James Jewell also have strong opinions on the subject. 

A veteran Winnipeg lawyer emailed me yesterday to alert me to what may be the first published legal decision in Canada that references ‘gating’ as a practice.

Not one carried out by police, mind you, but by the National Parole Board, of all entities. 

It’s interesting to me that the term exists in law. 

Here’s the 1983 Ontario Court of Appeal decision on ‘gating,’ for the record (and the court found the practice out of bounds, BTW.)

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