THE BAD NEWS: THEY'RE STILL NOT SCARED OF US

When the RCMP special drug section finally made the arrests, the heavies in
the Asian crime syndicate displayed an astounding familiarity with Canada's
lite brand of justice.

"They feel rather safe in this area and subsequently were freer . . . than
they find themselves in other parts of the world," said a member of the
Vancouver Island District Drug Section upon seizing 54 kilos of heroin in
an underground operation of global proportions.

"They are not scared of us."

How right they were. Three years after the heroin sweep, all trafficking,
conspiracy and proceeds of crime charges against 10 of the suspected drug
lords were wiped out. A B.C. judge laid to waste the RCMP's entire
investigation and interception of a quarter of a million taped telephone
conversations that had been the Crown's case against them.

Two years of senior police time, 15 publicly paid informants tattle-telling
to cops, 11 extensive warrant applications before Justices of the Peace
allowing for police bugging of 39 individuals' phone lines and 250,000
intercepted calls, 50 days of legal argument before a judge . . . down the
drain.

How could such a massive, costly investigation into contract killers,
counterfeiters and heroin importers have been so flawed?

I'll tell you how: bad judgment -- by the senior investigating officers, by
the court-appointed officials who rubberstamped the warrants and by the
judge who let them off.

Let's start with the RCMP who commenced illegal activities in their pursuit
of the suspects. Affidavits detailing an investigative strategy that was
designed to curry favour from the magistrates were less than truthful.

A B.C. Supreme Court judge said officers fibbed to get the go-ahead to
snoop on telephone chats, a manner of crime detection so invasive it caught
the Supreme Court of Canada's attention in 1990: "One can scarcely imagine
a state activity more dangerous to individual privacy than electronic
surveillance."

Instead of employing conventional methods of investigation first, as they
were legally required to do, Mounties immediately stepped in to tap
personal phone calls. They continued to spy on those who had no information
on the importation and conspiracy.

Indeed, their surveillance of choice was much like a fishing expedition:
cast a huge net and see what/who surfaces, a clear violation of civil
rights and one that our top court has repeatedly warned our best crime
detectors to stay away from.

But what did these Mounties do? Repeatedly eavesdropped on cellphone chats
without authorization. To top it off, they intercepted and recorded more
than 2,000 conversations of a suspect's family who weren't even in the
target group. "Less than one per cent" of these calls were related to the
investigation, police sheepishly admitted later.

These are our highly skilled members of a special drug unit, cherry-picked
for their investigative abilities and knowledge of laws regarding the
gathering of evidence.

Heads should roll.

Next problem: the warrants, some of which gave officers the go-ahead to
breach privacy rights. How many times does a B.C. court magistrate reject a
police request for a search warrant? Unknown -- there's no statistical
research available. But if their workload is like the rest of the world's,
it's unlikely they have the time or appetite to question the actions of the
country's top intelligence gatherers who stand before them.

That takes us to Justice R.D. Wilson's ruling, which led to the release of
the heroin suspects. Wilson did so on the grounds he believed you, the
public, would be appalled at the officers' intrusions on personal privacy.
To prosecute on unlawful wiretaps would bring the administration of justice
into disrepute, he concluded. They had to be tossed.

I say the opposite: In my books, for every one of you apt to disrespect a
system which let police run amok, two of you are certain to disrespect a
system that lets 10 major drug suspects walk. What do you say?