TAKE THE HANDCUFFS OFF POLICE WHEN THEY FIND DRUGS

We've lived for some time in a state that has no business in the
bedrooms of the nation.

Since the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was turned over to them,
judges on the highest benches in the land have been telling us that
the state -- through its agents like police and their dogs -- have no
business in our garbage, our backpacks, the trunks of our cars or
anywhere else we assume its safe to hide illegal stuff, unless they
get a warrant.

Increasingly, it seems, evidence that should be putting people behind
bars, or at least under house arrest, is being tossed out because
police have seemed unable to obtain it without offending the charter
rights of people who break the law to privacy.

While crooks are being let off, overzealous cops are being told
off.

One of them is Ontario Provincial Police Const. Brian Bertoncello.
When, four years ago, he spotted an SUV being driven at the posted
speed limit -- a sure sign that something was amiss -- he pulled it
over, ripped open two boxes in a back compartment and discovered 35
kilograms of cocaine said to be worth up to $4.6 million on the street.

At trial, the Ontario Superior Court justice called Bertoncello's
actions "incredible .. brazen and flagrant," his reasons for stopping
the SUV "contrived" and his breaches of charter rights "extremely serious."

But the judge refused to exclude the evidence since the rights of the
accused "paled" in comparison with his criminal conduct. Now the
Supreme Court of Canada is being asked to toss the conviction out and
set the drug seller free. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association is
telling the court, as if it needs to be told, that it's "an inevitable
consequence" of the charter that "criminals will escape justice" and
that if the document didn't exist "police would catch more criminals."
I'm not at all sure that every Canadian, let alone every cop, approves
of this state of affairs.

One of the lawyers supporting the appeal says that the case is one of
"an alarming pattern" where lower court judges permitted the use of
evidence "tainted" by the way it was obtained.

Presumably the Supreme Court will weigh the seriousness of letting
someone sell $4.6 million worth of coke to hapless customers against
the seriousness of letting a police officer try to stop it by relying
on a hunch.

I know which way I'd tip the balance, and I know, because I've been
around longer than the charter, that there was a time when Bertoncello
would have been given a commendation.

I won't go as far as those who say there's no place for respecting
privacy, or that people shouldn't do anything that they'd be ashamed
of if found out. I think there's a place for curtains, for whispering
and sealed envelopes.

I don't think police should be allowed to kick in doors where
shady-looking characters live, stop cars driven by teenagers or follow
someone who's black or wears a turban, just because.

But I think that if officers find contraband, proscribed substances,
illegal weapons or bombs without going through proper procedures, they
may be scolded, but what they find shouldn't be deemed not to exist.

I find it incredible that the B.C. Civil Liberties Association is
objecting to a proposal before Translink in Vancouver to use sniffer
dogs on SkyTrain and certain stations to detect explosives during the
2010 Games.

"Authoritarian regimes use animals to control people," declares BCCLA
president Rob Holmes. He says the idea that violating the privacy of
people on the trains in this way is as bad as the way Victoria police
stopped buses on Canada Day and seized booze from teenagers. I suppose
he's right, so long as one of the trains isn't blown to bits.

Dogs, too, feature in another case in which the Supreme Court of
Canada upheld in April the exclusion of evidence -- drugs -- obtained
during a "fly-by sniff" at an Ontario school.

"Teenagers may have little expectation of privacy from the searching
eyes and fingers of their parents, but they expect the contents of
their backpacks not to be open to the random and speculative scrutiny
of the police," said the court.

Besides, it said, dogs don't disclose the presence of drugs, just an
"odour." Cripes.

Maybe police should wear muzzles, too.