BOARD TOO CASUAL ON STRIP SEARCH

THE VENERABLE Halifax Club does not condone illegal drug use, nor does it
permit such activity on its premises. But the lunchtime crowd there can
include a significant number of people who fit the stereotype of young,
high-powered, cocaine-snorting business types.

That's what we hear, at least.

We therefore encourage the Halifax Regional Police to raid the Halifax Club
soon and strip-search everyone present. Our guess is they'll find more
illegal substances than they did in January 2000, when they strip-searched
another stereotypical group: 30 to 40 staffers at a rave.

Some drug-free members of the Halifax Club may be as upset by the searches
as ravers Aimee Kindervater and Aleashia Stanley, but they should really
just relax.

They certainly need not trouble the Nova Scotia Police Review Board.

The board will simply explain to them, as it did to Ms. Kindervater and Ms.
Stanley last Thursday, that these things are inevitable.

"It is in the nature of police work, search warrants and searches, that
many innocent people are often caught up in legal and reasonable police
operations," the board said in dismissing the complaint.

It noted the "strip-searches were carried out in a completely private
setting and with as much respect for the complainants as any strip- search
can be. At no time was either complainant fully naked."

The board was concerned about the large number of ravers strip-searched and
conceded that in such circumstances innocent people will be subjected "to
the embarrassment of a body search."

Still, "if this board challenges the actions of police officers acting on
reasonable grounds pursuant to legal search warrants simply because those
reasonable grounds were not substantiated later on, police officers would
be unable to carry out their duties," the decision says.

We urge members of the Halifax Club to bear this in mind should they some
day find themselves bent over while a member of Halifax's finest inspects
their exposed privates for illegal drugs. They should remember that they
won't be "fully naked."

The review board emphasizes that only staff were searched at the rave;
however, that doesn't make the searches any less random. The cops, who had
obtained a warrant on the flimsiest of information, had no idea who might
be carrying drugs and who might not.

We're left wondering if the board would have produced the same ruling if
its members had begun the hearing by submitting to strip searches.