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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2014
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Yik Yak
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Critics of the anonymous virtual bulletin board say it’s the latest tool for cyberbullying . . . Chilliwack just happens to be North America’s hot spot
His nose knows pot Marijuana case hinges on cop’s olfactory senses BY PAUL J. HENDERSON phenderson@chilliwacktimes.com
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BY GREG LAYCHAK glaychak@chilliwacktimes.com
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Chilliwack secondary student thumbs a message into his phone about the crooked star on the school Christmas tree during break. He watches as seconds later, almost all of his peers in sight look up at the star to see if it’s true. This localized, instant and widespread power to influence and entertain comes from a year-old mobile messaging platform that has received a lot of attention this week in the middle and secondary school systems. Yik Yak, the aptly named real-time virtual bulletin board, is designed to be a digital space where people in the same small geographic radius can share useful information. The emphasis on location and the ability to post anonymously is what differentiates the app from the hundreds of other social media selections and has gained it popularity on university campuses. Put in the hands of a small but loud section of the teenage demographic, however, the results of Yik Yak are less like a bulletin board and more akin to scrawls on the bathroom wall containing rumours and nastiness. “If you didn’t want to go to that washroom and read about what somebody wrote about you on the
Greg Laychak/TIMES
Yik Yak is the equivalent to note passing back in the days before social media—if everyone could read the note. Because no profile or password is required, the anonymous virtual bulletin board has become a concern for schools.
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n RCMP officer’s ability to pinpoint smell may prove to be central to the trial of the man alleged to be behind the largest marijuana grow operation in Chilliwack’s history. Seven days into the trial-within-a-trial of Lloyd Allan McConnell, his lawyer argued there was no basis to grant the 2009 search warrant that uncovered a sophisticated 11,520-plant grow-op in an underground bunker on Nixon Road. Defence lawyer Patrick McGowan’s central argument rests on the fact that Const. Chad Mufford swore in an affidavit to obtain the search warrant that he smelled “a strong odour of wafting marijuana” coming from 7630 Nixon Rd. Not only did Mufford walk by only once, McGowan argued, but the officer was unable to visually see much of the remote hillside property, and, critically, there happened to be an investigation underway into a possible grow-op at the adjacent property at 7640 Nixon Rd. “He just doesn’t have a basis to suggest that marijuana was emanating from the property,” McGowan argued in front of Justice Miriam Maisonville last week in court. McGowan has argued that McConnell’s Section 8 Charter privacy rights were violated when police searched his property on Sept. 9, 2009. That day, nearly 12,000 pot plants
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