Saturday, April 26, 2008

Top court puts muzzle on police sniffer dogs


Rulings to end routine searches in public places

Janice Tibbetts
The Ottawa Citizen

There will likely be a lot fewer scent-sniffing dogs routinely sticking their noses in public places following a Supreme Court of Canada ruling yesterday that tightened the leash on police powers to use the canines for random sweeps.

In its first pronouncement on sniffer dogs, the court sided 6-3 with a high-school student from Sarnia, Ont., and a Vancouver man who was caught with cocaine in his luggage at a Calgary bus terminal.

"We're no longer going to be able to show up and randomly search," said Tom Stamatakis, vice-president of the Canadian Police Association.

In both cases, police violated the charter right against unreasonable search and seizure by allowing their dogs to embark on general sniff searches of a school and bus depot without more concrete reasons to suspect drugs were present, the Supreme Court said.

The two rulings are expected to end routine searches in public places like schools and bus and train stations. The decisions, however, are silent on airports, where police dogs routinely sniff the luggage of passengers entering the country.

Past Supreme Court rulings have established that privacy rights are lower when weighed against the need to secure the borders, prompting speculation that sniffer dogs will continue to be used at airports in the absence of a specific legal challenge.

"It's fair to say the decisions wouldn't apply to airports," predicted Brent Olthuis, a lawyer for the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, noting that neither case involved matters of border security.

In the meantime, perhaps the biggest impact of the rulings will be in the nation's schools, where officials in some jurisdictions often call in police and their dogs to conduct searches without any information on a specific threat.

The court also ruled 6-3 in favour of Gurmakh Kang-Brown, who was caught with 17 ounces cocaine in his luggage after RCMP conducted a random search with a sniffer dog, Chevy, at the Calgary Greyhound Bus depot six years ago. The investigation was part of Operation Jetway, a national RCMP program to monitor the travelling public for drugs, weapons and other illegal contraband.

"Drug trafficking is a serious matter, but so are the constitutional rights of the travelling public," said the Supreme Court, overturning an Alberta Court of Appeal ruling.

Top court puts muzzle on police sniffer dogs