DRUG DOG RULING WON'T IMPACT PETERBOROUGH, CHIEF SAYS

A Supreme Court ruling that quashed random police dog searches will
have little impact in Peterborough, the city police chief says.

The Supreme Court of Canada, in a split judgment that reaffirms
privacy rights, ruled two random police dog searches that led to drug
charges failed to pass the legal sniff test.

The country's top court ruled Friday that police who use dogs to find
drugs in high schools or public places must be able to justify prior
suspicion of a crime in order to use evidence seized.

Randomly using canine teams amounts to unreasonable search and a
breach of privacy rights, said the high court.

The judgment does not affect airports where a specific set of federal
laws applies.

Police Chief Terry McLaren said the decision will likely have little
effect on the way city police operate.

City police, he said, rarely search local high schools.

"We only go in in the first place when we've been asked to by the
principal, because they own the property," McLaren said.

He said he could only recall three instances when police have
searched a high school.

But, he said, lockers are owned by schools and not students or pupils.

"If a dog hits on (a locker), the principal opens the locker, and if
there's drugs there charges are laid," he said.

McLaren said he hadn't read the decision yet, but said it will likely
have a greater effect for border agents and customs officials.

Greg Kidd, assistant to director of education Sylvia Terpstra with
the Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board, said the board doesn't
have random searches of its high schools.

But, he said, there was once a time when it did.

"These types of searches were stopped years ago, partially out of the
same concerns the court had," Kidd said.

Principals can call police if they believe there's a large enough
quantity of drugs for the purpose of trafficking, Kidd said.

"What's far more common is they're likely to conduct individual
interviews and searches," he said.

Students involved in those circumstances may be asked to open their
lockers, Kidd said.

"Canine involvement certainly doesn't happen frequently," he said,
adding the public board strives for a drug-free school and follows
the Provincial Safe Schools Policy.

No one was available to comment at the Peterborough Victoria
Northumberland and Clarington District Catholic School Board, but
Deirdre Thomas, schools superintendent, issued a statement.

"There have not been random police canine unit searches in
Peterborough Catholic Schools which resulted in police charges," Thomas states.

"There have been canine searches to support a drug-free school
environment with school discipline consequences for students found
with illegal substances discovered during searches."

Thomas stated the decision had more to do with police work than schools.

Friday's rulings conclude that both a spot high school search in
Sarnia, Ont. and one at a Calgary bus terminal were "unreasonably
undertaken because there was no proper justification."

The first case stems from the arrival in 2002 of police and a canine
team at St. Patrick's high school in Sarnia.

Students were confined to classrooms for about two hours while a
drug-sniffing dog led officers to a pile of backpacks in an empty gym
- - one containing bags of marijuana and some magic mushrooms.

"The subject matter of the sniff is not public air space," said the
ruling in the high school case by Justice Louis LeBel. "It is the
concealed contents of the backpack.

"As with briefcases, purses and suitcases, backpacks are the
repository of much that is personal. . . . Teenagers may have little
expectation of privacy from the searching eyes and fingers of their
parents, but they expect the contents of their backpacks not to be
open to the random and speculative scrutiny of the police.

"This expectation is a reasonable one that society should support."

In the other case, Gurmakh Kang-Brown had just arrived from Vancouver
at a Calgary bus terminal when a suspicious Mountie waved over
another officer with a drug-sniffing black Lab.

The dog immediately detected drugs and sat down to alert her master.

The Alberta Court of Appeal said that Kang-Brown was neither
unlawfully detained nor illegally searched. The top court disagreed
and set aside his conviction.

The majority ruling stresses that "reasonable suspicion" of a
probable drug crime must exist prior to such dog-sniff search in
schools, malls, sports stadiums and other public spaces.

"This is a good day for civil liberties," says Frank Addario,
president of the Criminal Lawyers' Association.

"The judgment is a reasonable compromise between law enforcement
aspirations to search indiscriminately, and the right to privacy.

"Now they need reasonable suspicion - not a trumped-up profile or a
pretext search based on speculation."