LEASHING DOG SEARCHES LACKS JUDGMENT

Only the memorable words of Forrest Gump seem appropriate in
summarizing a recent Supreme Court of Canada ruling on random
police-dog searches: "Stupid is as stupid does."

While some have suggested the ruling on two separate cases that
"reasonable suspicion" of a probable drug crime must exist prior to
such dog-sniff searches in schools, malls, sports stadiums and other
public places was a victory for civil liberties, the rest of us were
left shaking our collective heads at the thought of public safety
again taking a back seat.

The case that generated most of the attention stemmed 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 of the backpacks contained bags of marijuana and some magic
mushrooms. A student identified as A.M. was charged with possession of
pot for the purpose of trafficking.

However, because the officers had no search warrant or prior tip that
there were drugs in the school -- officers had instead visited on the
basis of a long-standing invitation from school officials -- at trial
the drugs were excluded as evidence and the charges were dropped.

It was the Ontario Court of Appeal that first ruled against the Sarnia
school search arguing there was no reasonable, factual basis for the
random police search.

However, what seems to be lost in all of this discussion is the fact
that principals and teachers are charged with the responsibility of
protecting students. Shouldn't the fact that illegal substances were
found be paramount in securing that protection?

Both the Canadian Association of Principals and the Canadian
Professional Police Association agree that drugs in schools are a
problem. They say drugs impact the user's ability to learn, impact the
general learning environment and create safety concerns for all students.

In 1998, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that since teachers and
principals are taking the place of parents, they have a responsibility
to ensure a level of safety at school. For that reason, school
officials have more leeway than law enforcement to conduct searches of
lockers, even though they eventually turn evidence over to the police.

Perhaps that's why the Sarnia school ruling is so confusing. Shouldn't
the fact that the Sarnia school principal worked out a deal with law
enforcement to randomly search the school fall under the Supreme
Court's 1998 ruling? Just because the search wasn't officially written
in stone hardly seems like grounds for it to be deemed
unconstitutional or a violation of a person's rights.

What seems most concerning is the fact that all this debate comes down
to semantics. Lost is the fact that a student who was carrying and
concealing illegal substances was able to walk away from the case. If
this person had not been caught by law enforcement during the random
search, who knows what kind of harm might have been carried out in the
schoolyard or beyond.

And that's what this is really all about -- or so it would seem --
protecting the guilty from random drug searches.

Maybe if these individuals weren't trying to hide evidence in the
first place, it wouldn't have been such an issue.