Do Police Need A Search Warrant To Go Through Your Trash In Canada?

You take out your garbage and you put it at the curb, and there you see the police here that night, going through your trash, step by step and seizing something maybe for DNA analysis. What’s the law here? Do they have a right to do this. Can they do this without a search warrant? Great question.

Welcome back to the Kruse Law YouTube Channel. My name is Mike Kruse, and I’m here to answer common criminal law questions in plain language. So, do the police need a search warrant to go through your trash? Great question. Let’s break it down for you. Give some real-world examples. So first of all, when you’ve left your trash at the curbside that’s no longer on your private property, that’s the distinction. Under Section eight of our charter, you have a right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.

So, in your home, for example, if the trash is on your private property more close to your door, for example, or even on your driveway, leading up the door on your lawn, they can’t get that. They shouldn’t be able to get that. But once you’ve abandoned it, anyone can grab that trash. I mean, anyone going by can take it, and the police can take it. There’s the key distinction right there.

So let me give you some examples. So, let’s say you’re under investigation for murder. Police want to get a DNA sample to match it, and they stupidly make a decision to go into your backyard and go through your trash. Well, that’s likely to be excluded because that’s on private property, so you’d have a reasonable chance of being successful on a section eight charter application to exclude that evidence from being admitted at trial. That’s a pretty stupid decision. Police aren’t going to be that stupid, probably, but let’s say you abandoned your coffee cups and whatnot in your garbage at your curb. Clearly, the police can grab that. They don’t need a search warrant, and then they’re going to go get a DNA analysis and see if they can match you to the murder.

Sothe real key distinction, then, is on private property you have a reasonable expectation of privacy on your private property, in your home, even your lawn, backyard, your business, less so a business, but we’ll keep it at home for now. But the bottom line then is they clearly do not need a warrant if you’ve abandoned the trash at the roadside. So, there you have it. There are some real examples that you may not have known of. That’s the law of garbage with respect to throwing out your trash and whether the police need a search warrant.