A. Introduction

• Author: Steve Coughlan
• Profession: Professor of Law. Dalhousie University
• Pages: 131-132

Page 131

This chapter deals with police investigative techniques other than searches with and without a warrant that were discussed in Chapter 4. There are a number of such techniques-indeed, as the discussion below will show there is in principle no necessary limit to their number-but the discussion here will focus on three specific areas. All three areas, this discussion suggests, show a recent and significant expansion in police powers.

First, section 487.01 of the Code, which creates "general warrants," will be examined. Most of the principles relating to the review of the issuance of search warrants discussed in the previous chapter apply equally to these warrants, and they also authorize techniques that infringe on a reasonable expectation of privacy. As a result, it would have been possible to discuss them in the Chapter 4. However, general warrants can authorize techniques going well beyond anything that one would traditionally think of as a search-in the terms of the statute they are available to authorize police to "do any thing"-and so they are worth singling out for particular discussion.

Second, police powers of detention will be...