DRUG TRAP LEGAL: COURT

Judge Widens Undercover Powers In Target Drug Area

TORONTO -- A nearly one-km-long stretch of a busy Toronto street has been
designated a target area where undercover police can approach "any person"
and try to coerce them to sell drugs.

Normally police must have specific targets. But an Ontario Superior Court
judge has ruled that because trafficking along a stretch of Eglinton Avenue
East in the Scarborough area of Toronto was "mobile," it justified random
stops of people to see if they would sell drugs.

In a ruling that could expand the powers of urban drug squads, Justice
Harry LaForme upheld the conviction of a man who sold $40 (less than 1/10
of a gram) of crack cocaine to a Toronto police officer. The man, Sean
Sterling, 23, had argued he was a victim of police entrapment.

But in the ruling released earlier this month, LaForme said police must be
given "substantial leeway in investigation techniques" because of the
"social consequence" of trafficking.

In an earlier decision, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in a case
involving Vancouver's Granville Mall that police may target an area instead
of a specific person and attempt to solicit drug sales on the basis that
there is evidence of trafficking and the area is "sufficiently defined."

SCARBOROUGH IS DIFFERENT

In the Ontario court case, LaForme accepted police testimony that while
street-level trafficking is normally "site specific," the practice differs
in Scarborough.

"In Scarborough it is a more mobile drug trafficking operation through the
use of vehicles and bicycles," wrote LaForme, who imposed an eight-month
conditional sentence on Sterling.

During a three-day hearing last month, LaForme heard evidence from drug
squad officers about attempts to make "opportunity buys" of crack cocaine
along an 800-metre section of the street.

A Toronto police constable testified that while driving he observed a
"young black male with baggy clothes," walking along the street.

The officer said this description "absolutely matched" his profile of drug
dealers in the area.

The suspect, later identified as Sterling, was "meandering around, looking
around and looked approachable," the officer testified.

He pulled his car into the parking lot of a strip mall, approached the man
and said he was looking for a "40-piece man-rock."

The officer purchased less than a tenth of a gram of crack cocaine and
arrested Sterling.

Sterling's lawyer Peter Bawden, who praised LaForme for serious
consideration of the entrapment argument, noted that the judge did not
accept one officer's testimony that the drug target area on Eglinton Avenue
should be nearly seven km long.

The defence lawyer also questioned the strategy of Toronto police drug
squads for a focus on street-level dealers, who are frequently addicts,
selling small amounts of crack to subsidize their habit.

"Police are not going after people higher up in the (drug) chain," said Bawden.

LaForme, who is aboriginal, is reportedly a potential candidate for one of
two existing vacancies on the Supreme Court of Canada.

He is known for writing an Ontario Divisional Court ruling, later upheld by
the Ontario Court of Appeal, which permitted same-sex marriages. He also
issued an order in 1998 granting a man with AIDS the right to cultivate and
use marijuana for medicinal purposes.