Are Canadians crazy?

Still, we're thinking seriously about going down the same road!

Whose rights protected? 

Andrew Bolt

Sunday, July 19, 2009 at 12:42pm

 

 

Are Canadians crazy?

Even the discovery of cocaine worth up to $4 million was no excuse for a police pull-over and search that trampled Charter rights, says Canada’s top court.

 

The Supreme Court of Canada has thrown out a drug conviction linked to the 2004 seizure because the officer who hit the narcotics motherlode “flagrantly” breached his suspect’s Charter protections… “While an officer’s ‘hunch’ is a valuable investigative tool—indeed, here it proved to be highly accurate—it is no substitute for proper Charter standards when interfering with a suspect’s liberty,” wrote Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin for the court…

 

On Oct. 24, 2004, the Ontario Provincial Police officer stopped the Dodge Durango near Kirkland Lake, Ont., that (Bradley) Harrison and a friend had rented two days earlier at the Vancouver Airport.

 

The constable had noticed the vehicle was missing a front licence plate. He quickly realized, however, that the Durango was registered in Alberta and didn’t require a front plate.

 

That’s where the matter should have ended, wrote McLachlin. Instead, the officer told court that since he already had his lights flashing, the “integrity” of the police required he pull the vehicle over.

 

Harrison said he couldn’t find his driver’s licence. A computer search revealed that it was suspended. The officer arrested Harrison on that basis, but then said he searched the vehicle in hopes of finding the lost licence—even though it was by now irrelevant. Two cardboard boxes in the back of the SUV contained 35 kilograms of cocaine with a street value of up to $4 million.

Process trumps judgment.

 

Posted via email from Garth's posterous