Disarmoury Square
The tale of the non-working order.
Scott Egan, June 26, 2022 // Brantford, Ontario
Former Brantford Police Station on Greenwich Street. Stock Photo.
OK, here’s one.
In late 1991, Brantford got a new police station up on Elgin Street. The old one was on Greenwich Street beside where the food bank is now. It was a tiny joke of a building. Built in the early ‘50s, it hadn’t held up well and needed constant repairs. Nicknamed ‘The Dungeon,’ it had flooded almost 50 times since the mid ‘70s. It was out of date and Brantford’s police force had outgrown the facility in every way. There was even a problem with brazen vandalism to police vehicles, both service and personal. In December of 1981, the police department requested funds for a fence to deter such a problem. Request denied.
So, anyway, at the end of 1991 the new police station opened and all was swell. Then four months later the armoury on Brant Avenue was burgled. Bandits busted in and took 64 assault rifles, two machine guns and nine semi-automatic pistols. On the way out the thieves also snagged a pickup and made a clean getaway.
Brantford Armoury on Brant Avenue. Stock Photo.
Yet the heist was still a failure on both sides.
As the break in was happening, the perpetrators tripped the alarm, and the alarm started wailing, just blasting in an empty building on Greenwich Street. See, the police didn’t move the alarm when they moved the station. So, the alarm is sounding in the old police station while these dudes made off with 70-something guns and a pickup truck from a provincial armoury.
A day later police found the pickup truck in Burlington and a month after that a fella was arrested and police seized 60 of the guns that were stolen. Turns out none of the guns were in working order with barrels stopped and the firing pins removed.
Anyway, I think it’s hilarious.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Scott Egan, best described as an extroverted hermit. Scott is an afficionado of all things old, odd and esoteric. An avid reader and collector, he’s accumulated a backlog of legends and lore that he loves to share with most anyone who will listen. A father of two, Scott lives along with his feline soulmate amongst thousands of books and hundreds of objects of the strange and unusual.