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The ends do not justify the means

A long time ago in a land far, far away, I was a practicing lawyer.
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A long time ago in a land far, far away, I was a practicing lawyer. In the ensuing decades, I've lived down the shame and in a pinch I can blame my career choice on (a) accidentally accumulating enough credits to get an undergraduate degree, and (b) more proximately, Richard Nixon's inability to find peace with honour in Vietnam. Law school seemed a marginally enlightened choice compared to grunting it out in a rice paddy trying to stay alive fighting against poor people with whom I had no beef. Moving to Canada — a far more enlightened choice — gave me a ready-made excuse to become a recovered, which is to say retired, lawyer.

Being the youngest lawyer in the most successful firm in a small town in southern New Mexico, I ended up doing more than my share of public defender cases. That was because there were only two public defenders in town and the local judges would assign excess cases to practicing lawyers. Since no self respecting partner in the firm would deign to take them, I got not only my own but all of theirs. Meh.

Most of my PD "clients" were, in legal parlance, guilty as hell. But some weren't. And the ones that really got my ire up were the ones who'd been set up by mean-spirited, redneck cops. Being in small town southern New Mexico, mean-spirited, redneck cops weren't an endangered species, in fact, they seemed to be the dominant life form in the plethora of law enforcement agencies operating in the area.

Since we were so close to the U.S. – Mexican border, there were both fixed and random — floating from place to place — Customs and Immigration checkpoints on the various highways. Ostensibly, the feds manning these checkpoints were looking for illegal immigrants, or as they endearingly referred to them, wetbacks.

In reality, the checkpoints caught more "hippies" than illegals. The ruse generally worked like this: Long-haired guy would pull up to a checkpoint — or simply be stopped at random because he looked undesirable — and in the course of checking his licence and registration, or looking for invisible illegals, the cop would "smell" marijuana. Voilà, reasonable cause to search the vehicle.

It wasn't unusual to find pot. An amount as small as a dropped roach would be enough to make a major drug arrest. And if the search turned up nothing, it was not unknown for pot to mysteriously appear in the sucker's car, having been placed there with a bit of ham-fisted legerdemain by the officer of the law.

The cases were problematic to try. Judges tend to believe cops even when they're lying through their teeth. Like the one who had a horrible head cold but could still detect the faint smell of pot. Or the one who, under cross-examination and in response to my question, said his sense of smell was so good he could smell and describe the cologne I was wearing... notwithstanding I wasn't wearing any scent at all.

So what's the point of this stroll down memory lane? Well, it's this: Police already have wide latitude to find wrongdoing when they pull somebody over. If that's what they're after, they can find it or — having convinced themselves the ends justify the means — create it. They don't need more power.

Which, unfortunately is what they're being handed by the Harper government, directly and indirectly.

The Harpercrites have made no secret of their war on crime, notwithstanding it seems to be a war against an imaginary foe. Crime of all sorts is down, not down like Blackberry stock, but down like the purchasing power of your wages that have been frozen for the better part of the last decade.

And now, the Supreme Court of Canada — loaded with Harper appointees — has expanded the police forces' ability to randomly use sniffer dogs pretty much any time they encounter a member of the public. What had been held, by previous courts, a breach of citizens' right to privacy, is now fair game from sea-to-sea-to-sea.

The case involved a guy stopped for speeding. He looked nervous. Duh. And the cop who stopped him had his trusty canine with him who sniffed out the 14 kilos of pot in the guy's trunk. The split court held, five to four with four of five — I know it's confusing — Harper appointees joining the majority, using the dog in a place formerly forbidden was OK. Heck, the guy had pot, didn't he? Hello pooch; goodbye privacy.

But that's not the most egregious advance on the police state front. Turns out Canada's Justice (sic) Minister, Peter "The Weasel" McKay, wants to expand the intrusiveness of roadside checks by allowing police to randomly demand breath tests from drivers even where they have no grounds whatsoever to believe the driver is impaired or even been drinking.

Roadside checks are bad enough. They're historically ineffective, catching a miniscule number of impaired drivers and, arguably, far fewer than having all the police cruisers involved in a roadside check simply driving around watching out for drivers who can't seem to keep their cars between the lines. Consider how often you see people driving yourself who you'd pull over if you were a cop.

But roadside checks where the police can demand a perfectly sober, clear-eyed sap heading home from work to blow into a breathalyzer is an affront to what few rights to privacy we still have left, not to mention lazy police work. It turns one of the foundations of our jurisprudence on its head. Instead of being presumed innocent, you would have to prove your innocence before being allowed to go your merry way.

Under current law, police have the right to stop any driver at random and question them about their sobriety. If that pleasant exchange gives the cop reasonable grounds to suspect the driver has been drinking, a breath test can be administered. Seems reasonable, more or less.

But under the McKay's proposal drivers could be stopped at random and have to blow to prove they hadn't been drinking.

I know; if you haven't been doing anything wrong you don't have anything to worry about. Achtung, baby. Sorry mad mothers, the ends do not justify the means here. If Canada wants to get serious about keeping impaired drivers from behind the wheel, they can find ways that respect what we used to think of as the rule of law.

Sadly, we're likely on the road to the more intrusive option.

On a more upbeat note, I'm still planning to be at the Brewhouse Saturday from 4:00-6:00 p.m. for Nana G's Unmemorial. Mezzanine level if you're so inclined.