HIGH COURT ASKED TO RULE ON BACKPACKS

Privacy Issue; Legal Battle Looms Over Sniffer-Dog Searches At Schools

OTTAWA - When a seasoned sniffer dog named Chief detected drugs in a
teen's backpack, he kicked off a legal battle that reaches the
Supreme Court of Canada today in a test of how far police can go in
conducting random searches in high schools.

The court will be asked to consider whether police in Sarnia, Ont.,
were violating the student body's Charter rights by bringing a
scent-tracking dog into St. Patrick's High School in November, 2002.

The police, who had received a standing invitation from the
principal, acknowledged in earlier court proceedings that they were
not acting on a tip, they had no reason to believe student safety was
threatened and that it would have been a "fruitless exercise" to try
to obtain a search warrant.

Students were confined in their classrooms for almost two hours while
police searched the school, including backpacks piled in a corner of
the gymnasium. After a signal from Chief, police zeroed in on one
pack, in which they found 10 bags of marijuana, 10 "magic mushrooms"
and assorted drug paraphernalia.

A student identified as A.M., who was 17 years old at the time, was
criminally charged, but later cleared by two courts on the grounds
that police had violated his Charter right to be free from
unreasonable search and seizure.

The issues at the Supreme Court include whether Chief was actually
conducting a search, and whether students are entitled to privacy
when it comes to their personal backpacks.

"Students spend so much of their time in a school environment and one
of the life lessons you should learn in school is that you are not
going to be locked up and searched by the police when no one believes
you have done anything wrong," said Jonathan Lisus, a lawyer for the
Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which is siding with A.M.

"Schools are not supposed to abdicate their authority to discipline
kids to the police. It should be done as a last resort, not as a first resort."

The association contends that student backpacks -- which are "like a
portable study and bedroom all rolled into one" -- are highly
personal and should be treated as such.

"There isn't any reason why a 17-year-old girl shouldn't have the
same expectation of privacy in her backpack than a 21-yearold woman
does in her handbag or a 35-year-old man does in his brief case," Mr.
Lisus said.

Crown lawyers counter that Chief was not conducting a search, but
that he only sniffed out a potential trouble spot and tipped off
police, giving them "reasonable" suspicion to believe that drugs were
present -- an accepted bar for conducting searches.

Moreover, a Supreme Court ruling in favour of the teen could also
have serious ramifications for the future of police dogs to help save
lives by rooting out explosives during random police patrols of
trains, buses and subways, said the Crown.

The school board, which oversees the school, maintains that schools,
because of their duty to protect students, are in a league of their
own when it comes to searches, which can include calling in the police.

"School boards and their officials exercise a form of control over
children comparable to that of a parent," said the board's written
submission. "As a result, the law imposes a heightened degree of
attentiveness."

The appearance of police and their sniffer dogs, which happens
routinely in schools, act as a deterrent that helps keep out drugs,
said Paul Wubbin, the board's director of education.