POLICE NET CAN BE CAST TOO WIDE

Supreme Court Decision Underscores the Need for Human Rights While
Stopping Gang Crime

Police forces across Canada, which have had considerable success
recently in rounding up members of biker gangs, are miffed that the
B.C. Supreme Court has put a wrench in the works. Justice Heather
Holmes has declared that a new section of the Criminal Code designed
to get at the ringleaders is unconstitutional.

Chief Superintendent Bob Paulson, the RCMP's director-general in
charge of combatting major and organized crime, says the decision
"gets in the way" of police investigations.

Holmes's decision may prove an inconvenience to police, but in a
democratic society such as ours, laws are not supposed to be blunt
tools that can damage more than their intended targets. The judge
said, in the first case to test one of several amendments to the code
made in 2001, that it doesn't make clear who is or is not a member of
a criminal organization.

Her decision has effectively squelched any further use in B.C. of
Section 467.13 of the Code, under which a member of a criminal
organization who instructs someone to commit an offence that benefits
the organization could be sentenced to life in prison.

Police had been relying on that section to go after the heads of gangs
who order others to do their dirty work for them and have them
punished more severely than other members.

Parliament widened that definition of "criminal organization" in 2001
as part of the government's attempt to crack down on the Hells Angels
who, at that time, were running amok in Quebec.

It decreed that three people instead of five were sufficient to
constitute a gang, and removed the requirement that at least one
member of the organization had committed a crime within the past five
years.

The judge suggested hypothetically that a martial arts teacher who
gives lessons to members of a gang might be considered a gang member,
the way the law is written.

The Hells Angels are a national menace. Nobody believes them when they
deny they're an organized crime syndicate. They're a special criminal
element that deserves special measures to get them out of circulation.
But as we've seen with some of the anti-terrorist measures that Canada
adopted in the wake of 9/11, the zeal of our lawmakers can encourage
legislative overkill.

There may be terrorists stalking our streets, motorcycle gangs tearing
up the neighbourhoods, and criminal organizations conducting a
lucrative trade in drugs and weapons.

But most of us abide by the law, and the law, in turn, should respect
us.