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Current Affairs 2008 - Police (85 items)
| Jun 19, 2008 | $40 Pot Charge Has Law in Turmoil Clifford Long's constitutional saga began in September 2005 when he was a passenger in a car stopped by police for a seatbelt infraction.
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| Jun 14, 2008 | Parasiris 'Relieved' Upon Learning His Fate Parasiris and his wife both testified they had no idea it was the police who had broken into their home.
Both said they didn't hear officers shout "Police!" until after Tessier had been shot.
As one writer put it: "If you can't trust armed masked raiders who burst into your home in the middle of the night, who can you trust?" |
| Jun 6, 2008 | Judge Throws Major Drug Bust Case Out Of Court A major Winnipeg drug bust has been thrown out of court after a judge found police had no right to conduct a gunpoint takedown of a suspected dealer.
The 2004 arrest -- in which a large quantity of marijuana and meth was found inside a vehicle in St. Vital -- was deemed an excessive show of force by police and a "serious" breach of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
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| May 31, 2008 | Suing Abbotsford Police A wheelchair-bound man is suing the Abbotsford Police department for an alleged assault and negligent treatment he suffered in police cells after his home was subject to a drug bust in November.
[Any facade of being public servants who serve and protect quickly vanishes in instances such as this] |
| May 26, 2008 | Search And Detention At Sea, But Keeping A Balance When a high-school principal in Sarnia, Ont., turned his school over to the police for a good portion of the day to let a drug-sniffing dog roam, he sent a terrible message to his students about what a democracy should permit the state to do in pursuit of its goals...Drug trafficking is not a trivial crime, but the presence of drugs poses no immediate danger. Guns do.
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| May 17, 2008 | Shotgun, Dope Seized From Cop's Wrecked BMW EDMONTON - A shotgun and marijuana were seized from the car belonging to an off-duty Edmonton constable accused of causing a fiery crash while intoxicated. ...Brown, 29, faces five counts of impaired driving causing bodily harm, five counts of dangerous driving causing bodily harm and one count of driving with a blood alcohol level over .08. ...Brown, a three-year veteran of the force, has been suspended with pay from his job.
[Is there any other profession where you can screw up so badly, yet get time off work with pay that is provided by taxpayers?] |
| May 13, 2008 | ON: OPP Made 2246 Drug Busts In 2007 The Ontario Provincial Police drug section says it arrested 2,246 people across the province in 2007 for drug offences. The provincial force also dismantled 551 indoor and outdoor marijuana grow operations in which 6,000 kilograms of dried marijuana was seized.
[Imagine all that taxpayer moeny being spent to fight real crime] |
| May 8, 2008 | Court Rulings Allow for Protection of Students And Their Charter Rights A recent Supreme Court of Canada decision concerning police use of trained dogs to ferret out drugs in schools has some school administrators up in arms. But the decision is a reasonable one, as it protects students' constitutional rights while still allowing police searches in certain circumstances.
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| May 8, 2008 | Grow-Op Team Suspended Over Claim Of Theft Langley Township's marijuana grow-op busting team has been suspended in the wake of an allegation of theft against one of its members...A member of the team allegedly took a flashlight with two batteries, valued at between $25 and $30, from one of the raided homes.
Wade said the member could not immediately be replaced on the team so its operations have been suspended.
[Cops have been known to take things during busts - so it seems very strange this case even came to light] |
| May 7, 2008 | City Going Too Far Witch hunt. Police state. Overzealous. Heavy handed. All of these terms -- and probably a lot more we couldn't print -- are being used to describe the City of Coquitlam's approach to rooting out marijuana grow operations. ...And before the legalize-marijuana lobby starts writing letters about how the problem could be avoided if pot were legal, we agree.
Pot, however, is not legal. And illegal grow-ops pose a huge fire hazard. That means the inspection approach to shutting down grow-ops is a good thing -- when one key ingredient is factored in: common sense.
[Indoor gardens do not pose significant fire risk] |
| May 5, 2008 | BC: Holy Smoke Trial Wraps Testimony wrapped up in the Holy Smoke drug trafficking trial Friday after four Nelson-area witnesses took to the stand to testify that cannabis has helped them deal with disease, alcoholism, and drug addiction.
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| May 1, 2008 | Sniffing Out the Larger Implications of the Dog Sniff Cases Dogs "Search" When they Sniff for Narcotics
Most importantly, all nine justices (essentially) agreed that when a police dog trained to sniff out narcotics focuses its olfactory powers on an individual's knapsack or luggage, the target's reasonable privacy expectations are encroached upon. In other words, this constitutes a "search" for s. 8 Charter purposes, a conclusion that triggers the "reasonableness" requirements of the guarantee.
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| Apr 28, 2008 | Drug Laws Tested This Week In B.C. Supreme Court In another courtroom, the Vancouver Island Compassion Society will continue its assault on the anti-cannabis criminal law with the resumption of testimony from Senator Pierre Claude Nolin, who led the 2002 parliamentary review of drug policy that concluded pot should be legalized.
They're interrelated cases with national repercussions that rely on a substantially similar body of jurisprudence.
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| Apr 28, 2008 | When Laws Are Held In Contempt, We All Suffer When pro-marijuana advocates gathered in downtown Vancouver recently to smoke pot in defiance of the law, many puzzled citizens wondered why the police took no action against them. ...As John Winter, president of the B.C. Chamber of Commerce, told The Province editorial board: "In a perfect world, the police would have dealt with them with some severity, but the fact is the police don't have the support of the community."
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| Apr 28, 2008 | QU: McGill Students Arrested on 4/20 Two McGill undergraduate students were arrested on lower campus last Sunday when at least eight Montreal police officers swarmed onto campus to break up a small crowd of marijuana smokers.
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| Apr 25, 2008 | Supreme Court Muzzles Sniffer Dogs The use of drug-sniffing police dogs in the random search of a southwestern Ontario school and a Calgary bus terminal was unconstitutional, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Friday.
In a 6-3 decision, the top court ruled that the actions breached Section 8 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which covers what constitutes reasonable search and seizure.
The ruling, which could have an impact on police powers across the country, centred on two cases.
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| Apr 15, 2008 | Resident Shaken by Police Raid Oakville landscaper Brock Morris was left shaken and shaking his head after the Halton police raided his home at gunpoint, Friday, in search of a marijuana grow house operation.
The police walked away empty handed from the raid, leaving Morris and his family bewildered and shaken.
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| Mar 31, 2008 | Ontario Makes Case For Random Police Questioning he Supreme Court is expected to revisit a rule it established 11 years ago that said evidence obtained by police when people are forced to incriminate themselves after their Charter rights have been violated may not be used against them in a trial.
The April 24 hearing stems from an appeal filed by Donnohue Grant, who was convicted of gun possession charges in 2004.
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| Mar 28, 2008 | Legalize All Drugs: Former Police Officer After 28 years on the Vancouver police force, Tony Smith believes the "war on drugs" is creating far more problems than it's solving.
During a 45-minute speech at the Alberta Harm Reduction Conference on Thursday, Smith argued legalizing all drugs would lower crime, and take control of the drug industry out of the hands of dangerous criminals.
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| Mar 28, 2008 | Coping With The Pain "Who is it harming? Where is the victim?" asks Cheryl MacLellan, co-owner of Hemp Country. "If there is no victim, there ought not to be a crime."
Those comments may be surprising coming from MacLellan who is a former Children's Aid Society child protection worker and a former police officer in the detective's office with the Oxford Community Police Service.
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