SUPREMES TIGHTEN LEASH ON RANDOM SNIFF SEARCH

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, 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.

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 after 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 gym.

After a signal from a sniffer dog, 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.

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