Charges laid in large animal seizure on Calgary city limits

A large animal seizure on a rural property in the southwest corner of the city has resulted in charges.

After moving onto the property in the 8300 block of 150 Avenue S.W. Tuesday, the Calgary Humane Society with assistance from the Calgary Police and its Tactical Unit, seized 40 dogs, cats, reptiles and birds found to be in distress.

“This does remain an active investigation at this point and for our purposes it’s rather early on, so some of the details would be limited,” said Senior Manager of Cruelty Investigations with the Humane Society Brad Nichols. “Where we have safety concerns or where we’re executing a warrant, we take Calgary police with us to keep the peace, with this file here there was some concerns and a very large scale property that was hard to contain so we left it to C.P.S. to make decisions on what would be appropriate for officer safety.”

Nichols says there was livestock on the property and that was part of the concern going in but they were only able to seize those animals deemed to be in distress at the time.

“What we encountered on the property was environmental conditions that would have caused distress, unsanitary conditions, lack of water available to the animals as well as medical concerns that were found both on the scene and by examination afterwards,” he said.

Officials with the Calgary Humane Society are still trying to determine who was the owner of the animals given the large transient population that was living on the acreage at the time.

It was a concern from another agency that led them to file for the first warrant.

“It’s large, we’ve certainly seized more animals than 40 but on a property this size, there’s approximately 80 acres in the portion we were dealing with, it certainly posed some issues as far as capturing animals, the potential for a very long search and officer safety concerns as well.”

Nichols says they had been given some intelligence before executing the warrant and it required some front-end work.

He says the prognosis for the animals, now in their care, is largely good. There are some behavioural issues they are dealing with given the neglect at play.

According to the Calgary police, several items were seized as a result of the search warrant including 20 long rifles found hidden around the property.

“We assisted two veterinarians and members of the Calgary Humane Society who determined there was a large number of animals in distress,” said Staff Sergeant Guy Baker. “I was there on the initial inspection of the land and believed in fact due to smells, and what I saw, these animals were absolutely in distress. In the 31 years I have been a police officer, I have not seen such a disgusting and dirty environment to live as humans and also to raise animals.”

Baker says they were dealing with a large acreage and they had received intelligence there were weapons on the property so they decided to deploy the Tactical Unit.

Investigators are still trying to determine how many people were living on the property, police believe it’s over 15, some of which are known to them.

“Everything went very smoothly, over 40 police officers were working diligently on this investigation as well as 15 partner enforcement agencies,” said Baker. “It was new to me, we’re dealing with a rural property that became part of the city of Calgary so we dealt with this in a pragmatic fashion to make sure everyone was good and we had a large area to cover.”

Additional search warrants were executed Tuesday night and Wednesday during the day due to some suspicious activity.

Fifty-six-year-old Fred Albert Brokop of Calgary has been charged with one count of breach of a court order and 15 weapons-related charges.

He’ll appear in court next on Wednesday, March 14th, 2018.

The Calgary Humane Society is deciding if they will lay Criminal Code charges or Animal Protection Act charges against any of the individuals on the property.

The statute of limitations allows the society six months to make a decision to decide if they will lay charges. They say they are familiar with Mr. Brokop, who has previous Animal Protection Act charges and convictions against him.

An investment company owns the land and reached a deal with the original owner so that Brokop could continue living on the property.

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