Three people are facing a slew of charges after police seized over 200 weapons from a northeast Calgary home following a lengthy investigation into the fencing of stolen property.

Police say recent violence in the city’s northeast prompted an investigation to target violent offenders and stem criminal activity in the area.

Investigators were alerted to suspicious activity at a home in the 0-100 block of Pinelore Place N.E in August and following an extensive investigation, executed a search warrant on the home on Thursday, October 1.

Police found large amounts of stolen property, cash, drugs and multiple weapons including:

  • Four modified shotguns – two loaded – with various ammunition
  • 20+ replica firearms
  • Four compound bows and one crossbow
  • 194 edged weapons, ranging from sharpened swords to throwing knives
  • Approximately $50,000 in stolen tools
  • Various amounts of marijuana and cocaine

“There’s four real firearms, they’re all the ones that are located in the boxes, the other ones are replica handguns but as you can see, it’s almost impossible to tell which ones are real or not. So when you start looking at having those types of weapons out in the public from a public and officer safety perspective,  we have some great concerns with those types of weapons being out in the public,” said CPS District 5 Staff Sgt. Brad Moore.

Police believe the home was being used as a “fence house” where stolen property was being traded for drugs, mostly marijuana and cocaine.

“It was a barter system basically, you trade it. The problem with that likely is that if I wanted that crazy weapon I could probably go to that house and purchase it for either drugs or cash as well so it was kind of almost a network of give and take from that particular residence," said Moore. “Who knows what the weapons are actually going to be used for but because they look so realistic, you’re going to gain a lot of compliance and that’s really concerning to us. When you factor in the drugs on top of this and the mental state of the people on drugs, the volatility of those situations escalates to the point that we have great concern.”

Tanner Ray Lang, 32, Jan-Anne Marie August, 24, and Mark Lee Gardner, 41 each face multiple stolen property, drugs and weapons-related charges.

Officers took several days to sort and catalogue the huge volume of stolen items and have started the process of trying to return the items to their rightful owners.