Posted on 02/27/2013 5:08:50 PM PST by Kaslin
Imagine that a police officer, after taking it upon himself to search someone's car, is asked to explain why he thought he would find contraband there. "A little birdie told me," he replies.
Most judges would react with appropriate skepticism to such a claim. But substitute "a big dog" for "a little birdie," and you've got probable cause.
Or so says the U.S. Supreme Court, which last week unanimously ruled that "a court can presume" a search is valid if police say it was based on an alert by a dog trained to detect drugs. The court thereby encouraged judges to accept self-interested proclamations about a canine's capabilities, reinforcing the alarmingly common use of dogs to justify invasions of privacy. Drug-detecting dogs are much less reliable than widely believed, with false-positive error rates as high as 96 percent in the field. A 2006 Australian study found that the rate of unverified alerts by 17 police dogs used to sniff out drugs on people ranged from 44 percent to 93 percent.
Police and prosecutors commonly argue that when a dog alerts and no drugs are found, "the dog may not have made a mistake at all," as Justice Elena Kagan put it, writing for the Court. Instead, it "may have detected substances that were too well hidden or present in quantities too small for the officer to locate."
This excuse is very convenient -- and completely unfalsifiable. Furthermore, probable cause is supposed to hinge on whether there is a "fair probability" that a search will discover evidence of a crime. The possibility that dogs will react to traces of drugs that are no longer present makes them less reliable for that purpose.
So does the possibility that a dog will react to smell-alike odors from legal substances, distractions such as food or cues from their handlers. Given all the potential sources of error, it is hard to assess a dog's reliability without looking at its real-world track record. That is why the Florida Supreme Court, in the 2011 decision that the U.S. Supreme Court overturned, said police should provide information about a dog's hits and misses.
"The fact that the dog has been trained and certified," it said, "is simply not enough to establish probable cause," especially when, as in most states, there are no uniform standards for training or certification.
Kagan, by contrast, minimized the significance of a dog's success at finding drugs in the field. She said police testing in artificial conditions is a better measure of reliability, even though handlers typically know where the drugs are hidden and can therefore direct the animals to the right locations, either deliberately or subconsciously.
Instead of requiring police to demonstrate that a dog is reliable, this decision puts the burden on the defense to show the dog is not reliable through expert testimony and other evidence that casts doubt on the training and testing methods used by police. But experts are expensive, and police control all the relevant evidence.
Police even determine whether the evidence exists. Many departments simply do not keep track of how often dog alerts lead to unsuccessful searches, and this decision will only encourage such incuriosity.
The court previously has said that police may use drug-sniffing dogs at will during routine traffic stops and may search cars without a warrant, based on their own determination of probable cause. Now that it has said a dog's alert by itself suffices for probable cause, a cop with a dog has the practical power to search the car of anyone who strikes him as suspicious.
Even the question of whether a dog did in fact alert may be impossible to resolve if there is no video record of the encounter, which is often the case. As Florida defense attorney Jeff Weiner puts it, the justices "have given law enforcement a green light to do away with the Fourth Amendment merely by uttering the magic words, 'My dog alerted.'"
Cops lie as part of their job. That’s how they get information and elicit confessions. They teach it in criminology. How many of them in uniform lie for personal gain and to get themselves out of trouble? Well let’s see...take 100 police officers, subtract the number that are saints, and you’ve got your percentage.
The idiot is the person who believes a false positive will result in the confiscation of big bucks. That is you!
Then you are claiming all cops lie and can't be trusted. Are they all out to get you?
I mostly agree with you. At a minimum, the dog’s training and experience ought to be an issue that could be raised.
I personally think drug dogs should be used to search for terrorist types, and stay out of the drug wars.
A very relevant response.
I object to drawing broad conclusions from individual examples. Because the police in the Bronx or NYC think that ‘making numbers’ is their job does NOT mean that every PD or even every officer thinks or behaves that way.
I find it interesting that this an ever increasing effort to make our police officers out as the bad guy and never to be trusted no matter what. Across this nation there are many local PDs and Sheriffs offices that do a very tough job and do it well.
I am tired of the singularities thrown about as proof
5 posted on Monday, February 04, 2013 2:04:11 PM by Nifster
So you're saying police officers are idiots?
LAS VEGAS --A group of Nevada Highway Patrol troopers and a retired police sergeant have filed a racketeering complaint against the NHP and Las Vegas Metro Police in U.S. District Court...The complaint alleges that the drug-sniffing dogs used by troopers in the program were intentionally being trained to operate as so-called trick ponies, or dogs that provide officers false alerts for the presence of drugs.
The dogs were being trained to alert their handlers by cues, instead of by picking up a drug's scent by sniffing, the complaint said. When a dog gives a false alert, this resulted in illegal searches and seizures, including money and property, the complaint said...The 103-page complaint alleges that Perry, along with others, used the K-9s to undermine the program to systematically conduct illegal searches and seizures for financial benefit.
So now you're saying the police officers who witnessed illegal searches for financial gain are idiots? Or are you saying all police officers are idiots? I want an answer!!
;^)
99.999% correct...congratulations, that's the sanest remark you've made on this thread.
No, is English too difficult for you? Do you know what this means, "That is you!"?
Then you are claiming all cops lie and can't be trusted. Your remark, not mine. Did you ever get beyond the third grade?
No, that would be you. Remember you claim 99.999% are liars . How do you know the complainants aren't?
FINALLY the cause of ypur brain-dead posts is explained...!
Yours are from a genetic defect? LOL!
Sounds like the handler hadn’t had a “hit” and cued the dog, either intentionally or no.
A dog responds in a way that he believes will please his alpha.
It isn’t about false positives. It is about illegal searches. A dog trained to give a false positive allows an illegal search to go down.
If you can’t grasp that, you are a true jackass.
From #147:
http://www.8newsnow.com/story/18886948/nhp-troopers-sue-department-over-k-9-program
The 103-page complaint alleges that Perry, along with others, used the K-9s to undermine the program to systematically conduct illegal searches and seizures for financial benefit.
Cops rarely report each other. That Thin Blue Line mindset.
This must have been truly egregious for a lawsuit to have been filed by other troopers.
And, true to form, you have ignored that post that shows irrefutable abuse of the use of drug-sniffing dogs and instead try to divert the discussion away from it.
You are not interested in debate. Just derailing it.
Yes, I was talking about state courts, which I thought I made clear in my post; you however were talking about courts with no qualifier, even implicitly from context.
Are all people in any given profession either liars or truth tellers? Yes or no.
Because the fact that a car doesn't contain drugs doesn't mean it won't have something else of interest. For example, cops may know that people driving to or from a flea market are likely to have large amounts of cash. Drug-dog alert plus large amount of cash equals free money for the cop's department. Some victims may successfully sue to get their money back, but in most cases the robbers will get to keep it.
If cops are all liars, how do you know the complainants aren't?
Cops rarely report each other. That Thin Blue Line mindset.
How about teachers, doctors, lawyers stockbrokers, politicians and financiers? Just because you carry wood for cops doesn't make them any more guilty of protecting their own than other professions.
you have ignored that post that shows irrefutable abuse of the use of drug-sniffing dogs
Ignored? I posted directly from the link about the UCD report. Are you blinded by your pathological hatred or just oblivious?
From personal experience I would have to answer most all are truth tellers.
Has there been a credible study with published conclusions stating otherwise??
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