STRIPPED UNREASONABLY

It was a frightening anachronism, and now it is gone. The era of the
routine strip search is over in Canada.

As early as 1853, a British court balked at giving police carte blanche to
conduct strip searches, in a case involving a man locked up for the night
for drunkenness. "Even when a man is confined for being drunk and
disorderly," said the court, "it is not correct to say that he must submit
to the degradation of being searched, as the searching of such a person
must depend upon all the circumstances of the case."

Nearly 150 years later, it is appallingly the case that police in many
Canadian jurisdictions have been routinely conducting strip searches. Eight
female students who held a sit-in two years ago at Trent University were
arrested and strip-searched. Earlier this fall, Sandra Turner, an airport
security guard just outside Toronto who stopped a police officer from
walking around her checkpoint and was charged with disturbing the peace,
was strip-searched.

Police typically cited a concern about hidden weapons or evidence, but they
did not need to show why a simple pat-down search or frisk was insufficient
in a particular case. As long as there were no abuses, such as violence or
mockery of the suspect's nakedness, they were on solid legal ground.

No more. The Supreme Court of Canada said this week that strip searches,
defined as the removal of clothes from private body parts, are dehumanizing
by their very nature. "In our view it is unquestionable that they represent
a significant invasion of privacy and are often a humiliating, degrading
and traumatic experience for individuals subject to them."

The court's 5-4 ruling came in the case of an alleged drug trafficker, Ian
Golden. Finding some crack cocaine on his fingers, Toronto police pulled
his pants partway down in a private area of a restaurant, whereupon they
saw a bag clenched in his buttocks; the police then closed down the
restaurant and attempted to extract the bag against his will, using rubber
gloves borrowed from the restaurant's toilet cleaner. The majority said the
five police officers on the scene could have taken Mr. Golden to the police
station a two-minute drive away to conduct the search, without losing any
evidence.

It is in the nature of rights that when an alleged drug trafficker's rights
are at issue, so too are the rights of protesting university students, or
any other citizens who for whatever reason run afoul of the law.

Now strip searches are presumed to be unjust. The court suggested
Parliament might pass a law requiring a judge's warrant for such
procedures. In any case, if police wish to conduct a strip search they must
adhere to certain guidelines. The searchers must be of the same sex as the
suspect; approval from a senior officer must be sought; the search should
be at a police station if possible. Above all, the police must be able to
show that they had reasonable and probable grounds to believe they would
find concealed weapons or evidence on a suspect.

As the minority judges wrote, it's a radical change. It's also a needed
one. We should all breathe a sigh of relief.