POLICE, BC FERRIES WENT OFF THE DEEP END

It's hard to know what is stranger, the eagerness of police to stage a
costly and likely illegal search of B.C. Ferries customers' cars, or
the Crown corporation's willingness to allow the alarming exercise.

Well-run companies put their customers first. They cooperate with
police, but they also expect officers to have obtained the proper
legal authorization before invading their customers' privacy.

In this case, police would have had to explain to a judge why a search
warrant was justified.

Not B.C. Ferries. Police didn't get a warrant before they launched
Operation High Seas on the ferries between Nanaimo and Horseshoe Bay,
using drug dogs to check the cars of unsuspecting passengers. They
simply asked B.C. Ferries, and management said, sure, come on board.

A company that put customers first would have made a different
decision. Some travellers may be fine with police dogs sniffing around
their cars, without their consent. But many B.C. Ferries customers
considered the search intrusive and unreasonable. They don't want
police poking around their vehicle without cause, and they don't want
the ferry corporation acting as a police agent without telling its
customers.

It shouldn't have been a tough decision for B.C. Ferries. Sorry,
officers, but we don't think our customers would welcome this, and we
put them first. Why don't you go to a judge, explain why you have
probable cause and come back with a warrant?

That police didn't take that step - which also would have helped
ensure successful prosecutions - provides the answer. No judge would
approve a plan to randomly search more than a thousand cars, on
private property without any reason to suspect any
individuals.

Operation High Seas raises equally troubling questions about police
priorities. A dozen officers from five detachments, with five dogs,
spent the day in search of ferry customers with marijuana. They made
seven seizures, worth around $30,000. Only two resulted in charges;
in the other five cases police just took the drugs.

What exactly was accomplished? The drugs are gone, an inconvenience
for the people who lost them. No one will likely go to jail, or even
be convicted. The courts tend to toss out cases based on questionable
searches.

The B.C. Civil Liberties Association's John Dixon believes the
searches wer illegal, and wonders about police priorities. "If you
can't find anything else for police officers to do than ride around on
the ferries, in the hope of busting somebody for having some dope in
their car, then West Vancouver obviously needs fewer police officers,"
he said.

It's a good point. A dozen officers could have accomplished quite a
ot in a day to make the community safer. It's hard to see what they
achieved on the ferries.

But then it's hard to see what we're accomplishing generally when it
comes to dealing with the marijuana industry.. And it's worrying how
far police have drifted from the traditional goal of gathering
evidence that would allow people to be prosecuted for crimes.

Vancouver city council is being asked to come up with $480,000 a year
to continue funding Growbusters, a special police until that targets
marijuana growing operations for another three. years. (That doesn't
include the cost of six police officers assigned to the unit.) The
Growbusters team has charged almost no one in two years. It raided
grow ops - more than 1,100 - seized the plants and equipment and moved
on. It didn't gather evidence or arrest people. It just tries to
make it slightly more difficult for growers.

Growbusters personnel are typical police foot soldiers in a losing
battle. Last fall, B.C.'s Organized Crime Agency reported there were
15,000 to 20,000 grow ops in the province, fuelling a wholesale trade
worth $6 billion - about five per cent of the province's GDP. Police
efforts had succeeded mainly in pushing the operations out of the
Lower Mainland and into the rest of the province, and in encouraging
the serious criminals to switch to producing chemical drugs like speed
and Ecstasy.

Another study last year found police were too busy even to investigate
one-quarter of the reports they received about growing operations.
They laid charges in less than half the cases they did find, and fewer
than half those charges resulted in convictions. Among those
convicted, only 20 per cent got jail time.

Police have to enforce the law. but they also have to make choices.
And tackling a host of crimes, from cocaine trafficking to car
break-ins to youth violence, should come before spending a day
randomly checking cars on the ferries.