Lawrence Manzer, as anyone who’s been following my blog for a while will know,  is the man currently facing charges of “weapon dangerous to the public peace” in Burton, New Brunswick.  His crime?  Stepping onto his porch with an unloaded shotgun to make sure his neighbour was safe.

Manzer’s neighbour Brian Fox was charged with assault for restraining three drunk teenagers who were trespassing and vandalizing his property.  Those charges were later dropped.

He faces a maximum of a $5,000 fine and/or 6 months in jail for daring to protect himself, his family and his neighbours.

This is, to be blunt, utterly absurd.  The three teenagers involved had been vandalizing and stealing from the neighbourhood for 6 months, yet the RCMP was not interested in showing up.  Not until Manzer’s wife dialed 9-1-1 and said they had the young perpetrators in custody.

THEN the RCMP showed up, drove the young offenders home, and came back a week later to charge Fox with assault and Manzer with “weapon dangerous”.

They should have pinned medals on both of them for their amazing community service.

Instead, Manzer will be on trial later this year and will likely, given the stupidity of our [alleged] justice system, be serving some time in the Big House come summer.

 

On March 14th Laurie Manzer was interviewed on CBC Radio 1 Halifax about his case.  Listen to that interview here:

[S3AUDIO file=’2011-03-14-Laurence-Manzer-Interview.mp3′ authurl=’true’ autoplay=’false’ vol=’70’]

Right-click and select Save-As to Download MP3 of Laurie’s CBC Radio Interview [S3FILE file=’2011-03-11-Laurence-Manzer-Interview.zip’ anchor=’Download MP3 of Laurie’s CBC Radio Interview’]