NOT AS SEEN ON TV: REAL LAW

Horatio Caine talks to low-life criminals with a smug tinge and a
tilt of his head as he works out the clues of the crime scene.

No sooner does he whip the sunglasses off his face that the crime is
solved, one hour after the crime is first committed, minus the
commercial breaks.

But life is no CSI: Miami, and if Sgt. Kirsten Marshall of the
Smithers RCMP detachment could get her way the show would work much
differently.

"Search warrants, I wish they didn't show those things on T.V.
because it makes it look like you just get them like that," she said.

The search warrant as seen on T.V. is one of the largest offenders
for causing misconception in the public.

Applying for a search warrant, and being granted one, is a process
that can take the better part of a working day.

Marshall said that when it comes to even a minor search warrant,
writing it and sending it to the Judicial Justice Centre for a
justice of the peace's approval can take four-to-five hours. The
document itself may be six or seven pages, a relatively light application.

"I think a lot of people don't understand that there's a threshold we
have to meet to get into a house," said Marshall.

That threshold is a lot more than simply a hunch as the justice
system, said Marshall, has made the point that entering someone's
home is a huge invasion of privacy.

"People think it's literally easy enough to go 'well, I went and I
talked to the judge and got a warrant.' Well it doesn't work that way
in Canada."

Timeliness, not only the vagueness of the crime tip, is a factor in
whether a search warrant can go through as well.

If, for instance, she said, a tip comes in at night that Johnny is
selling some marijuana, by the time the warrant is able to be
processed that marijuana may be long gone and a search wouldn't yield anything.

The basic thing to remember, she said, is that your neighbour, as
much as you may not like it, has the same rights to privacy as you do.

The lab is another facet of policing that doesn't receive any
justice, as it were, by its portrayal in television.

It's another part of policing that has the appearance of swiftness
but that is not how it works out.

"You're talking months, usually, before you get a response from a
lab," said Marshall.

Some samples do get priority but there is still the time to transport
samples to major centres where labs are located.