TOP COURT PUTS LIMITS ON POLICE DOG SEARCHES

OTTAWA - There will likely be a lot fewer scent-sniffing dogs
routinely sticking their noses in public places following a Supreme
Court of Canada ruling Friday that tightened the leash on police
powers to use the canines for random sweeps.

In its first pronouncement on sniffer dogs, the court sided 6-3 with a
high-school student from Sarnia and a Vancouver man who was caught
with cocaine in his luggage at a Calgary bus terminal.

"We're no longer going to be able to show up and randomly search,"
said Tom Stamatakis, vice-president of the Canadian Police
Association.

In both cases, police violated the charter right against unreasonable
search and seizure by allowing their dogs to embark on general sniff
searches of a school and bus depot without more concrete reasons to
suspect drugs were present, the Supreme Court said.

The two rulings are expected to end routine searches in public places
like schools and bus and train stations. The decisions, however, are
silent on airports, where police dogs routinely sniff the luggage of
passengers entering the country. Past Supreme Court rulings have
established that privacy rights are lower when weighed against the
need to secure the borders, prompting speculation that sniffer dogs
will continue to be used at airports in the absence of a specific
legal challenge.

"It's fair to say the decisions wouldn't apply to airports," predicted
Brent Olthuis, a lawyer for the B.C. Civil Liberties Association,
noting that neither case involved matters of border security.

In the meantime, perhaps the biggest impact of the rulings will be in
the nation's schools, where officials in some jurisdictions often call
in police and their dogs to conduct searches without any information
on a specific threat.

SARNIA SCHOOL

Schools in the St. Clair district routinely invited police and their
sniffer dogs to root out drugs until a teen identified as A.M.
challenged the practice following his arrest on drug charges at St.
Patrick's Catholic High School in 2002.

During the search, students were confined in their classrooms for
almost two hours while police searched the school, including backpacks
piled in a corner of the gymnasium.

After a signal from a sniffer dog named Chief, police zeroed in on one
backpack, in which they found 10 bags of marijuana, 10 magic mushrooms
and assorted drug paraphernalia.

The Supreme Court majority said that the sniff search violated A.M's
rights, saying that students are entitled to the same expectation of
privacy in their backpacks as adults are in their purses or briefcases.

"Students are entitled to privacy in a school environment," wrote
LeBel. "Entering a schoolyard does not amount to crossing the border
of a foreign state."

The majority rejected the Crown's argument that no search took place
because the dog was only sniffing the public air and tipped off police
to a trouble spot, giving them reasonable suspicion to believe that
drugs were present.

The court also ruled 6-3 in favour of Gurmakh Kang-Brown, who was
caught with 17 ounces cocaine in his luggage after RCMP conducted a
random search with a sniffer dog, Chevy, at the Calgary Greyhound Bus
depot six years ago.

The investigation was part of Operation Jetway, a national RCMP
program to monitor the travelling public for drugs, weapons and other
illegal contraband.

"Drug trafficking is a serious matter, but so are the constitutional
rights of the travelling public," said the Supreme Court, overturning
an Alberta Court of Appeal ruling.