...do not hide your drugs! Keep them out in the open where they are easily accessible and visible.
Drawing a police line
August 24, 2010When they crashed into a townhouse looking for drugs, Toronto police weren’t taking chances. They battered down the door, tossed a stunning “flash bang” into the home, and rushed in with weapons drawn. Two people were charged with drugs offences.
Fair enough, Ontario Superior Court Justice Michael Code decided. The police had a warrant for the 2007 bust, and acted reasonably.
But then they proceeded to ransack the place with a zeal that dismayed Code and violated the residents’ constitutional right to be secure against “unreasonable search” or seizure.
They hacked open the back of a sofa, broke a cabinet door, emptied every closet, drawer and bookshelf out onto the floor, and left an “extraordinary mess” behind, Code found earlier this year.
“Particularly troubling” was the officers’ attitude. When asked why they didn’t put the scattered property back, one said: “We are police officers. We are not Molly Maid.” Another said: “There is no need to put it back. We are not trying to be polite.” Code found this “betrays a serious misunderstanding of the limits of their powers.”
“The deliberate and unnecessary damage to property, and the deliberate and unnecessary disorder and disarray in which the property was left, rendered the search unreasonable and in violation of Section 8 of the Charter (of Rights and Freedoms),” he found.
Code decided to let seized drugs be presented as evidence. But he warned that the police will risk future cases being thrown out if they don’t smarten up. It’s a ruling the drug squad should take to heart. Whatever some officers may think, there are limits. Crossing them discredits the force, and puts justice in jeopardy.
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