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“With insufficient supervision and guidance by senior RCMP members or any judicial oversight, (Mounties) performed warrantless searches and seizures of firearms in some of the evacuated homes,” Ian McPhail, interim chair of the commission, said in the 122-page report.

“The varied approaches taken by the members with respect to the handling of firearms demonstrate a lack of structure and coordination,” McPhail wrote. “The supervisory approach seems to have been hands-off, relying on the individual judgment of each member to independently arrive at a conclusion.”

And in many cases the conclusion arrived at by many RCMP officers was to remove unsecured firearms from evacuated homes and store them at the local detachment until owners could reclaim the guns after the mandatory evacuation order was lifted.

On June 21, a day after a devastating flood tore through High River, town officials ordered Mounties to conduct door-to-door searches — by force if needed — to locate and rescue stranded residents and pets.

Officers entered 4,666 of homes (754 by force), seized and tagged 609 firearms, and collected ammunition and other weapons. The guns were moved and stored at the local RCMP detachment and later returned to the proper owners.

As the mandatory evacuation order stretched on, residents grew increasingly frustrated as their homes sat rotting under muddy river water and stinking sewage. On Day 9, that frustration erupted after reports surfaced of the sweeping searches of homes and subsequent “gun grab” by Mounties as it was later labelled.