TOP COURT PUTS MUZZLE ON POLICE SNIFFER DOGS

Rulings to End Routine Searches in Public Places

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.

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.

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.