SNIFFER DOGS MUZZLED

Ruling Limits Random Searches In Public

There will likely be a lot fewer scent-sniffing dogs routinely
sticking their noses in public places following a Supreme Court of
Canada ruling yesterday 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, Ont., 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.

Quasi-private shopping malls, where private security guards are
sometimes called in with sniffer dogs, are another "grey area," said
Stamatakis.

The Supreme Court invited lawmakers to step in and spell out specific
police powers with sniffer dogs.

"Any perceived gap in the present state of the law on police
investigative powers arising from the use of the sniffer dogs is a
matter better left for Parliament," wrote Justice Louis LeBel.

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.

"What this means for us is we won't have the ability to bring the dogs
in at random," said Paul Wubben, director of education for the St.
Clair Catholic District School Board in Sarnia, Ont.

"It has to be more than the old notion that it's a high school, so
there are going to be drugs there."

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.

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.

In a strong dissent, Justice Marie Deschamps asserted that the privacy
interests of students were "extremely low," given that drugs had
infiltrated the school.

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