A Halifax-area man has had a slew of charges against him stayed after a judge concluded he was the subject of an illegal strip search by Halifax Regional Police.
Judge Alonzo Wright issued the stay in a ruling he delivered Wednesday in Halifax provincial court.
Dante Warnell Cromwell, 26, was facing more than 20 charges, including assault, drug trafficking and various firearms offences, stemming from an April 16, 2023, incident that Wright described as a case of “extreme road rage.”
“I remind myself that the burden here is on the Crown to show that there was reasonable and probable grounds to conduct the most intrusive and degrading search available to the police,” Wright said.
He raised a number of issues with the search, including the fact there were few notes kept by any of the officers, there were four officers present and the door to the room was left open.
As always, ACAB.
As a result of that search, 41 baggies containing a total of 25.5 grams of crack cocaine were discovered concealed around Cromwell’s midsection.
Then they did their job. Give these officers a raise and fire the judge for not wanting to keep the community safe.
Let’s get the cops to strip everyone naked at every traffic stop without any probable cause because that’s how good justice works? Our police need no reason to strip you naked? No.
If the cops thought he had drugs on him, there is due process. But they tried to use the sound of plastic rustling as their probable cause, which is not a valid justification by a long way. This guy could be in prison for drug charges if these cops followed the laws in place to protect us. But because the cops cut corners and curtailed a man’s rights in the process, any evidence is unusable. This man’s freedom, despite being a drug dealing piece of shit, is 100% the cops fault, they know this is illegal but did it anyway. They set him free with their own incompetence.
Outlaw clothing! Only criminals have something to hide!
Yes, free the (man)boobies!
Please don’t. I Like being able to have a full stomach.
Back in the day (late 70’s) the guy I was living with got strip searched in the middle of a main street in the city we lived in.
Cops have always done dirty shit to get the arrest notches on their belts.
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The search was illegal. No amount of whining by you or anyone else will change that fact.
If they had done their job the judge would not have thrown it out. Power tripping microdicks let this guy go by not following the legal process.
The judge is doing his job. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (sect. 24) forbids the use of evidence obtained by violating a Charter right in court. The right violated in this case would be “security of the person” in sect. 7. The cops knew this, or should have—“fruit of the poisonous tree” isn’t exactly an obscure legal concept, and is something they need to understand to do their jobs, so I assume it’s taught in law enforcement courses. So the evidence being thrown out is 100% the cops’ fault.
