This little barracks was used by a series of police agencies from 1904 to 1932, when the APP was disbanded and policing taken over by the RCMP. The building is most remembered for being the scene of the
infamous shootout between rumrunners Emilio Picariello & Florence Lassandro and Corporal Stephen Lawson Of the Alberta Provincial Police on September 21, 1922. The incident resulted in the death of Corporal Lawson at the scene and the ultimate hanging of Picariello & Lassandro.
The case was reported and debated nationally, primarily because one of the culprits, Florence Lassandro, was a woman who faced the death penalty. Though she initially admitted to the murder, she later recanted the admission, saying that she did it to protect Picariello, who would otherwise face hanging, while women's sentences were always commuted to life in prison. It was to no avail, however, as both she and Picariello were both hanged May 2, 1923 at the Provincial Gaol in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta.
Alberta Provincial Police Barracks
DESCRIPTION OF HISTORIC PLACE
The Alberta Provincial Police Building is a small, rectangular one-story wood frame residential bungalow style building situated on one urban lot on 18th Avenue in Coleman.
HERITAGE VALUE
The heritage value of the Alberta Provincial Police Building lies in the role that it played in the maintenance of law and order in the mining communities of the Crowsnest Pass from 1918 until the 1930s.
The International Coal and Coke Company established the town of Coleman in 1903 following the destruction of the town of Frank by a rockslide. Built the next year, this building was occupied by a series of law enforcement agencies: the North West Mounted Police, briefly, in 1904 (as there was already a detachment in Blairmore); a police officer hired for Coleman in 1910; and two constables of the Alberta Provincial Police Force (APP), who arrived in 1918. They shared the facility with town police until 1932, when the APP was disbanded and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police again assumed police duties in the Crowsnest Pass. It is one of the few APP buildings to survive and provides structural evidence of Alberta's attempt to undertaking its own policing.
The building was also the site of one of the most noteworthy crimes committed in Alberta. The APP was primarily concerned with labour unrest and the trade in illicit liquor that became widespread after prohibition in 1917. After APP Corporal Stephen Lawson was shot and killed in front of this building on September 21, 1922, a bootlegger named Emilio Picariello and his accomplice Florence Lassandro were convicted of the murder and sentenced to death by hanging. Lassandro thus became the first woman to be executed in Canada since 1899 and the only woman to be hanged in Alberta.
The building consists of two folk cottage style residences, joined together. It is typical of miners' houses built by the International Coal and Coke Company. Surrounded by other period residences its architecture represents life in an early mining town.
CHARACTER-DEFINING ELEMENTS
The character-defining elements of the Alberta Provincial Police Building include:
Exterior
- form, scale and massing;
- wood frame construction;
- medium hip roof;
- two brick chimneys decorated with corbelled brickwork;
- horizontal drop wood siding with corner board trim;
- double-hung window fenestration pattern.
Interior
- floor plan layout;
- fir tongue and groove flooring;
- tongue and groove wainscoting in front office area;
- baseboards, door and window trim;
- metal flue tie ins, evidence of cast iron stoves;
- tongue and groove walls and original ceiling material;
- plaster and fiber board wall and ceiling finishes.
From HeRMIS Alberta