A former Halifax man has been declared a dangerous offender for a kidnapping and an attempted kidnapping in Nanaimo, British Columbia in 1997.

Forty-year-old Andrew Paul Johnson appeared in a British Columbia court on Thursday. He was on probation in the fall of 1997 for an indecent act in the Hammonds Plains area near Halifax.

Police say Johnson was enrolled in a sex-offender treatment program when he left Nova Scotia and drove to Nanaimo, B.C. Posing as a police officer, he twice tried to entice 12-year-old girls into his car in October, 1997.

Police then stopped Johnson in Nanaimo and found a 20-year-old woman with a mental disability locked in the back of his car.