RCMP All Pissed Off A Private Business Told It To Get A Warrant If It Wanted A Copy Of Parking Lot Camera Footage
Say what you will about the general politeness of Canadians and the genteel nature of their secondhand Britishness, but never forget their cops can be just as petty and vindictive as our cops.
Law enforcement entities everywhere have a massive sense of entitlement. Officers and officials tend to think that people should comply with whatever they say, never question any assertions they make, and give them whatever they ask for without providing the proper paperwork.
The fact is that people aren't obliged to give cops things they're only supposed to be able to obtain with warrants. Voluntary consent eliminates this obligation, and that's fine as long as it's actual informed consent.
But cops tend to get all shitty when they're unable to obtain stuff without warrants. Rejected requests for consent are often treated as inherently suspicious. Reluctance to cooperate (without the existence of court orders compelling more) is viewed as obstruction and, sometimes, results in criminal charges (or at least an arrest) even when the person being badgered by cops is completely in the right.
This report of a Canadian bar's refusal to voluntarily relinquish its parking lot recordings contains plenty of statements from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and others in the law enforcement field. And every single statement makes it clear Canadian law enforcement believes they're owed whatever evidence might be available and should never be inconvenienced (even momentarily) by demands officers go get a warrant they could easily obtain within minutes.
A shooting happened outside of the Cactus Club Cafe and the RCMP asked anyone in the area to come forward with any recordings they might have of the area the shooting took place in. The RCMP approached the club and was told it needed to obtain a warrant if it wanted copies of the club's parking lot footage.
As the owners of the restaurant chain pointed out in its statement to Canada's Global News, this is standard operating procedure for the company.
The process of requesting a production order before releasing surveillance footage is a standard practice put in place across all of our locations. This protects privacy and ensures we're following the law."
Which is, of course, the way it should be. The company should comply with court orders but it should not feel obligated to hand over footage obtained by its cameras without one.
Everyone else - including the national association representing bars and restaurants - appears to feel the Cactus Club is in the wrong.
The general protocol is for people to give up, not just restaurants, but people to give up video to help and assist the police in a manner that's fairly quick," said president and CEO Ian Tostenson.
Totenson heads up British Columbia's Restaurant and Food Service Association. But rather than advocate for the rights of the private companies he represents, he has chosen to present the Cactus Club as some sort of scofflaw, even if all it did was ask to see a warrant before handing over recordings that can only be obtained with a warrant or consent.
That demand for the proper paperwork was apparently a first for the RCMP, which seemingly feels it shouldn't need to seek warrants when there's [checks article again] suspected criminal activity occurring. Here's just one of the statements made by British Columbia's visibly upset" public safety minister.
It's the first time it's crossed my desk that there has been a refusal to initially comply with police request for video," Mike Farnworth told Global News in an interview Tuesday.
Well, that's a shame. Too many private entities are being far too compliant. There's no legal obligation to consent to warrantless searches of any private property, including recordings created with privately-owned cameras. Just because most people turn over footage voluntarily doesn't make the Cactus Club wrong. It just means most people don't care about their rights, much less the precedent they're inadvertently setting - the sort of low bar that ensures law enforcement officers will be easily offended (and pettily vindictive) the moment anyone provides the least bit of (explicitly legal!) resistance.
And it's not just the RCMP. It's also the mayor of Coquitlam, where this particular club is located.
For a local business to insist that the RCMP get a warrant for information that they might have that could lead to an arrest is outrageous..."
It definitely is not outrageous." It's exactly within their well-established rights. The RCMP has an obligation to obtain consent or a warrant. It failed to get consent. It did, as the article notes, secure a warrant and the footage investigators were seeking. Everything worked out. And one would logically assume it didn't take much to secure the warrant, considering the strong likelihood the restaurant's cameras captured footage of the shooting.
So, why all the shouting? Well, it appears that everyone from the RCMP official to the mayor to the head of a private retail association believes cops should never have to get a warrant when investigating crimes. Holy shit, what a statement to make, even implicitly.
And somehow, it gets even worse. The club's decision to exercise its rights has been met with explicit retaliation by the BC government. Here's more from the BC public safety minister, who apparently sees nothing wrong with punishing a company for asking to see a warrant:
In the most recent case, Farnworth said the province has since amended the terms and conditions of the Barnet Highway Cactus Club's liquor licence.
They must have video surveillance and they must provide it to the police or a liquor inspector upon request," said the public safety minister.
A warrant is a request," you fool. And yet, this entity has decided to amend" a liquor license of this one club to force it to comply with warrantless demands for private camera footage - something that clearly falls outside of its legal obligations. But now, it's the law of land - a law that now explicitly singles out a single business with a compelled compliance mandate.
Hopefully, the Cactus Club will sue. This is clearly retaliatory. It's now subject to mandates that don't apply to other liquor license holders in British Columbia... just the one that did nothing more than ask the RCMP to respect its rights as a private business.