POLICE GIVEN SPECIAL POWERS IN EGLINTON TARGET AREA

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

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 to undercover officers.

In a ruling that could expand the powers of urban drug squads, Mr. Justice
Harry LaForme upheld the conviction of a man who sold $40 (less than a 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, Judge 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 police may target an area instead of a
specific person and attempt to solicit drug sales if there is evidence of
trafficking and the area is "sufficiently defined."

In the Ontario case, Judge 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 though the
use of vehicles and bicycles," wrote Judge LaForme, who imposed an
eight-month conditional sentence on Sterling.

During a three-day hearing last month, Judge 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 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 Judge LaForme for serious
consideration of the entrapment argument, noted the judge did not accept
one officer's testimony that the drug target area on Eglinton Avenue should
be nearly seven kilometres 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," Mr. Bawden said.

Judge LaForme 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, that permitted same-sex marriages.