Home » The RCMP And Warrantless Search

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Screw the US election, British Columbians now have real problems. Here’s a gaggle of chilling quotes:

“They don’t have to have a search warrant to go through your house. This is a police state.”

[Deletia.]

“This is brown-shirt Germany shit. We’re supposed to be living in a free country here.”

When an RCMP officer approached a bedroom where the Jensens’ two teenaged sons were still sleeping, Fay Jensen got worried.

“He’s got his hand on his gun,” she said. “This is bloody scary.”

[Deletia.]

[Citizens] who do not speak up against authoritarianism should not be surprised to wake up one day and find they have no freedoms left.

This situation is fallout from that earlier decision to have Hydro provide the police with all of our power consumption information. Now they’re using that information and some crazy bylaw to warrantlessly enter homes. Sorry homeless people, it’s time for the BCCLA to get all of my money.

Don’t worry, neighbors, the story ends on the lighter side:

If there is one consolation for the Jensens, it is a letter they received from the city last week informing them that they would not have to pay the $3,500 fee often levied to cover the cost of an inspection.

Written by Jack

February 5th, 2008 at 9:28 pm

Posted in Uncategorized

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8 Responses to 'The RCMP And Warrantless Search'

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  1. These inspections are supposedly voluntary:

    The inspector started asking questions, like how many people live in her home. After they left, Jensen went to the front door and saw the officials had placed a large, yellow official notice there stating she had 48 hours to schedule an electrical safety inspection or the family’s power would be cut off.

    • Obviously this inspection is not “voluntary”.
    • I don’t necessarily have a problem with the hydro company being able to share power usage information with the police, but clearly simply using a lot of electricity is not, by itself, grounds for a search warrant, and it certainly doesn’t provide probable cause for a warrantless search.
    • High power consumption may justify a municipal inspection for electrical safety reasons. But such an inspection wouldn’t need to involve every room and closet, as the RCMP did to the Jensens.
    • These are bad events, but I think this scheme will definitely be found unconstitutional by the court. The article mentions a person, with a past drug record, who refused the “voluntary inspection” and so had his hydro disconnected, and a judge ordered the power to be reconnected.
    • It would be great if the BCCLA provided the money and lawyers to make the Jensens’ situation into a test case.
    • This “voluntary” scheme doesn’t even sound like it would be effective in actually catching grow-ops. Given the forty-eight hour warning, and the choice between an inspection or a power cut-off, a grower could move the marijuana plants and other evidence at his leisure, accept that the power will be cut off after two days, and get the inspection afterwards when everything is cleaned up or simply flee if possible. For a law-abiding citizen, a choice between an inspection of every room and closet of your house and having your power cut off amounts to a compelled warrantless search; yet someone who is engaged in criminal activity in a house can escape a search under this scheme. This aspect of it reminds me of the federal long-gun registry: something which is a burden on law-abiding citizens (obviously not such a large burden as warrantless searches are), but which does not affect criminals.
    • Is there any serious movement in BC to get your own police force to directly handle provincial policing responsibilities instead of contracting it out to the RCMP?

    Don

    5 Feb 08 at 10:01 pm

  2. “I don’t necessarily have a problem with the hydro company being able to share power usage information with the police…”

    I do. This situation is why.

    The police naturally, and maybe even appropriately, enforce laws creatively. Once they get power consumption information it’s only natural they try to figure out some scheme to catch criminals using it. In the best case it’s the law of unintended consequences at work. But really — what else could the end result of giving them the information have been?

    [Edited to add: and yeah, I agree -- using a lot of power does not a criminal make. They should have to take that information to a judge, at the very least.]

    Great point about this dastardly scheme not being effective at catching criminals.

    BC has enough trouble with the one, Federal, police force. A provincial one will just saddle us with more review boards and appeals processes.

    Jack

    5 Feb 08 at 11:43 pm

  3. It’s too bad the city didn’t charge for the inspection. Then there’d be actual damages and an incentive for the Jensens to bring legal action.

    Jack

    5 Feb 08 at 11:54 pm

  4. Flag, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Whose gonna do it? You? You, Alex? They have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for the Jensens, and you curse the Police. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what they know. That the Jensen’s search, while tragic, probably saved lives. And their existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want them on that wall, you need them on that wall.

    Will

    6 Feb 08 at 7:46 pm

  5. First, that’s an argument for the existence of the military, not the police. I oppose the militarization — even symbolically — of the police force. That aside…

    I don’t argue that the police shouldn’t exist. I even grant (above) that they should enforce the law creatively. I think it’s pretty clear, however, that the RCMP needs to think before it acts a lot more than it does.

    The “inspections” are of questionable legality. In fact, the article mentions a judge siding with a man with a criminal past against the RCMP over one of these searches.

    Where is the RCMP’s legal “sniff” test? How does acting like this uphold their core values? How is this compassionate? Const. Basra in the article effectively says, “too bad” when talking about the Jensens.

    I think there are serious problems within the organization. I hope those are effectively addressed before the image of the Mounties we all love from our childhoods is tarnished beyond repair.

    Jack

    6 Feb 08 at 10:55 pm

  6. Some of the city council members have commented. Coun. Evelina Halsey-Brandt makes an ass of herself and Coun. Harold Steves makes big points with me over the situation. Too bad they don’t public email address.

    Jack

    9 Feb 08 at 4:35 pm

  7. [...] high-energy box you put your plants in to flower. Since one major way the police bust grows is by tracking all of our energy consumption, moving the power plant into the same building as the cannabis plant will protect growers even more [...]

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    23 Feb 10 at 11:44 am

  8. [...] paranoia is highly parallelized, so this immediately reminded me of how the RCMP gets all BCbians’ power consumption info as a consequence of the drug war. Now that Canada is beginning to engage in Copyright War (and, secondarily, our misadventures in [...]

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