PROCEEDS OF CRIME ACT 1987 - SECT 37 Search warrants may be granted by telephone

PROCEEDS OF CRIME ACT 1987 - SECT 37

  (1)   Where, by reason of circumstances of urgency, a police officer considers it necessary to do so, the police officer may make application for a search warrant under section   36 to a magistrate, by telephone, in accordance with this section.

  (2)   Before making the application, the police officer shall prepare an information of a kind referred to in subsection   36(1) or (3), but may, if it is necessary to do so, make the application before the information has been sworn.

  (3)   Where a magistrate is, upon application made pursuant to subsection   ( 1), satisfied:

  (a)   after having considered the terms of the information prepared in accordance with subsection   ( 2); and

  (b)   after having received such further information (if any) as the magistrate requires concerning the grounds on which the issue of the warrant is being sought;

that there are reasonable grounds for issuing the warrant, the magistrate shall complete and sign such a search warrant as the magistrate would have issued under section   36 if the application had been made to the magistrate in accordance with that section.

  (4)   Where a magistrate signs a warrant under subsection   ( 3):

  (a)   the magistrate shall inform the police officer of the terms of the warrant and the date on which and the time at which it was signed, and record on the warrant the reasons for granting the warrant; and

  (b)   the police officer shall complete a form of warrant in the terms furnished to the police officer by the magistrate and write on it the name of the magistrate and the date on which and the time at which the warrant was signed.

  (5)   Where a police officer completes a form of warrant in accordance with subsection   ( 4), the police officer shall, not later than the day next following the date of the execution of the warrant or the expiry of the warrant, whichever is earlier, give the magistrate who signed the warrant the form of warrant completed by the police officer and the information duly sworn in connection with the warrant.

  (6)   Upon receipt of the documents referred to in subsection   ( 5), the magistrate shall attach to them the warrant signed by the magistrate and deal with the documents in the manner in which the magistrate would have dealt with the information if the application for the warrant had been made in accordance with section   36.

  (7)   A form of warrant duly completed by a police officer in accordance with subsection   ( 4) is, if it is in accordance with the terms of the warrant signed by the magistrate, authority for any search, entry or seizure that the warrant so signed authorises.

  (8)   Where it is material, in any proceedings, for a court to be satisfied that a search, entry or seizure was authorised in accordance with this section, and the warrant signed by a magistrate in accordance with this section authorising the search, entry or seizure is not produced in evidence, the court shall assume, unless the contrary is proved, that the search, entry or seizure was not authorised by such a warrant.

  (9)   In this section, magistrate does not include a person by virtue only of the person being a justice of the peace.