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.

  • Cagi@lemmy.ca
    14·
    3 months ago

    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.