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Top court to rule on search by police at Sarnia school
I've made a thread in the French section on those articles :
Cour suprême: deux fouilles de chiens renifleurs jugées illégales
I didn't find an English version of the article for the moment, about the ruling of the Supreme Court who deemed the searched illegal.
The police officers didn't have probable cause (soupçons raisonnables) before the search. Search by police in public places such as school,
park and stadium will be harder.
OTTAWA–Canada's top court will rule today on whether police use of a drug-sniffing dog during a random visit to an Ontario high school was reasonable search and seizure.
The Supreme Court judgment could affect similar police powers in schools across the country along with parks, malls, sports stadiums and other public places.
"Whatever the court decides will apply to the use of sniffer dogs and whether a sniffer dog constitutes a police search," says Jonathan Lisus, lawyer for the Canadian
Civil Liberties Association, which intervened in the case. "It sends the wrong message to children in our schools that they can be arbitrarily detained en masse and
searched without any grounds to believe they have contraband or have committed any kind of offence."
The case stems from the sudden arrival in 2002 of police and a canine team at St. Patrick's high school in Sarnia. Students were confined to classrooms for about two
hours while the dog eventually led officers to a pile of backpacks in an empty gymnasium, says a court summary of the case. One of them contained several bags of
marijuana and some magic mushrooms. A student identified only as A.M. was charged with possession of marijuana for the purpose of trafficking. Police had no search
warrant or tip that there were drugs in the school. The officers had visited on the basis of a long-standing invitation from school officials.
At trial, the drugs were excluded as evidence and charges dropped. The Ontario Court of Appeal unanimously upheld the acquittal.
The Canadian Press
I've made a thread in the French section on those articles :
Cour suprême: deux fouilles de chiens renifleurs jugées illégales
I didn't find an English version of the article for the moment, about the ruling of the Supreme Court who deemed the searched illegal.
The police officers didn't have probable cause (soupçons raisonnables) before the search. Search by police in public places such as school,
park and stadium will be harder.