Pubdate: Wed, 07 May 2008
Source: St. Albert Gazette (CN AB)
Copyright: 2008 St. Albert Gazette
Contact: http://www.stalbertgazette.com/newsroom/write.htm
Website: http://www.stalbertgazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2919
Author: Dr. Paul Green

SNIFFER-DOG RULING COULD HAVE LARGER IMPLICATIONS

So now the fact that a student in school has illegal drugs in his/her 
schoolbag is not sufficient reason to ask the student to open the bag?

Having effective methods for detecting drugs that kill our children 
is a good thing and we should use them. But now the police cannot use 
sniffer dogs because it constitutes an "unreasonable search." Tell 
that to a friend of mine, the mother of a boy who was found dead last 
summer from crystal meth at the age of 23.

Imagine this: an angry young man takes an Uzi submachine gun to 
school, copying many past incidents of school murder in the United 
States and Canada. The police cannot ask him to open his bag, even 
though a specially trained dog indicates that there is a dangerous 
weapon in his bag.

Now a terrorist with a suicide bomb pack enters the LRT or a movie 
theatre to detonate the bomb in a crowd. A dog sniffs the explosives 
but, according to the Supreme Court, the police cannot stop him. 
After all, if they did not have a sniffer dog, the man would have 
looked like anyone else. That is like saying, "If you did not know 
that he had a bomb, you would have had no reason to ask to see the 
bomb." It would be an "unreasonable search" even though the dog tells 
the police with virtual certainty that he is guilty of carrying 
illegal explosives with intent to detonate them.

Imagine that a terrorist has a nuclear explosive. A Geiger counter 
posted in a gas station detects the radiation. However, the police 
cannot stop the terrorist's truck in the countryside, where there are 
few people. As a Canadian citizen, he is entitled not to be searched 
without "reasonable suspicion". The fact that a good detection device 
makes it almost 100 per cent certain that the person is breaking the 
law is not sufficient reason. If they did not have the detection 
device, the terrorist would have looked like anyone else.

As a consequence of the Supreme Court decision, we should now feel 
less secure that the police can protect us from drug deaths in our 
children, mass shootings in schools, suicide bombs in crowded places 
and a nuclear bomb destroying a city like Ottawa.

Searches using specialized detection equipment are anything but 
random. The dogs or other good detection devices only target those 
who are guilty. Innocent people are not randomly searched. It is now 
the role of the government to correct this decision by the court of 
supreme buffoons.

Dr. Paul Green,

St. Albert
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