LAW-BREAKING BY POLICE OK TO FIGHT CRIME: POLL

Majority Believe Officers Need This Power to Infiltrate Gangs, but
Civil Rights Group Is Not So Sure

OTTAWA - Canadians want a crackdown on organized crime and
overwhelmingly support officers breaking the law to infiltrate gangs,
a new federal government poll indicates.

The national survey, conducted for the Department of Public Safety,
also reveals that a majority of Canadians believe organized crime is
"as serious" a threat to Canada as terrorism, with seven of 10 wanting
improvements in the federal government's current level of effort to
combat it.

A remarkable 48 per cent of Canadians responded that organized crime
had an impact on them personally and identified drug trafficking as
the crime with the highest level of correlation to the criminal
activity. And more than half (54 per cent) agree that members of
motorcycle gangs should be prosecuted based on participation alone,
regardless of whether they have committed a crime.

"The majority of respondents believe that undercover police officers
should be permitted to commit certain crimes in order to infiltrate
gangs -- 40 per cent strongly agree and 35 per cent somewhat agree,"
said the survey's executive summary.

But Alan Borovoy, the general counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties
Association, wondered if the Conservative government were in the
process of preparing legislation giving police greater powers and was
using the survey to create the need for new laws.

He said the association's position on the issue is nuanced, and it
acknowledges that there are "extreme" situations in which the case can
be made to allow police to break the law.

"In the past, they've argued for these powers at a time when you were
reading in the newspapers about police conducting busts here and busts
there, and busting up that ring and this ring, and you start to
wonder, if they are doing so well with all these powers, where is the
argument for anything new," said Borovoy.

"So they may want to legislate and they have a survey now that demands
that they legislate. This is a marvellous way to run a country."

The executive summary put out by Public Safety Canada with the poll
said it was conducted to "examine public perceptions of the prevalence
of organized crime, the perceived risk of victimization and how
Canadians view efforts to combat organized crime in Canada." Conducted
between March 15 and 29, involving 1,337 telephone interviews with
adults aged 18 and over, the poll has a margin of error of plus or
minus 2.7 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. The RCMP authorized
undercover agents to break the law with immunity from criminal charges
11 times in 2005-06, during investigations into drug trafficking,
counterfeiting, alleged corruption of public officials and tobacco
smuggling.