Lisa Scott
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Sep 14/05) - Sherry Boulet spent two nights in a cold cell in the RCMP lockup last week.

Caught offguard after a municipal enforcement officer arrested her on a warrant for outstanding tickets, Boulet spent her time in the concrete cell wearing a tank top, jeans and bare feet. Her sandals were taken from her before she was locked up.

Sherry Boulet, a homeless single mother, spent two nights in RCMP lockup after being arrested by municipal enforcement for unpaid tickets. Boulet is another Yellowknife resident caught recently in an outdated traffic enforcement system

Boulet is the latest Yellowknife resident hauled off to jail because of an unpaid fine. Earlier this year she received tickets for speeding and driving without insurance and registration.

She says she forgot about a court appearance to pay the $575 in fines after being evicted from her apartment and finding herself on the street with no mailing address.

"It's more important for me to find a home for me and my son right now than this," she said after being released from jail by Supreme Court Justice J.Z. Vertes last Thursday.

"It's not that I'm not going to pay. I didn't know about it," she says.

Boulet has another court appearance Sept. 29.

Doug Gillard, municipal enforcement manager in Yellowknife, says until the system changes, people like Boulet may still find themselves arrested at any given time or place.

Municipal enforcement arrests people daily for unpaid fines, because that is the only recourse for collecting unpaid fines.

Most pay their fines on the spot or find the cash before finding themselves strip searched and in a cell. Boulet couldn't come up with the cash, so she was sent to jail.

Boulet was unaware of another option - the fine options program, where fines can be paid off through community service, according to the Department of Justice.

"We have to follow the system set out for us by the GNWT," says Gillard.

"There has to be an end consequence to receiving a fine. If we didn't collect on fines, nobody would pay anything," he says, adding the traffic enforcement program would crumble.

Gillard is aware of the media attention given to the issue lately, but with 100 outstanding arrest warrants for tickets ranging from $80 to $1,000 in officers' computers, the arrests aren't likely to stop.

Most of them happen when people are pulled over for an offence and the officer pulls up their record showing unpaid fines and a warrant of committal for their arrest.

Ry Forrest was arrested while driving his sister-in-law to job training this August - for a $115 two-year-old unpaid fine for not wearing a seatbelt.

It was Forrest's first arrest and it left the Yellowknife resident angry and confused that the motor vehicle licensing branch hadn't alerted him to the outstanding ticket.

Gillard hopes the territorial government will change the system and tie unpaid tickets into the Motor Vehicle Licensing office. Right now, NWT residents can get new licenses and registration with unpaid tickets on their record.

After Forrest's case was highlighted in Yellowknifer, MLA Dave Ramsay said he would raise the ticket collection issue in the legislature in October.

In the meantime, Gillard has some advice for drivers that may save them the humiliating and inconvenient experience of being handcuffed by a municipal enforcement officer on the way to catch a flight, or to work or even to drop the kids off at school.

"If they think they have an outstanding fine, it's so much better for them if they take care of it," he says.

Fines can be paid at the courthouse or at City Hall. If not, it can have some pretty dramatic consequences, says Gillard.