“and were searched on the authority of the same unlicensed drug-sniffing dog.”
***
Do drug dogs have to be licensed?
If so, why are the police using this one?
Actually this sounds like my dog. He really has a thing for sniffing crotches.
Probably because it was able to alert on command or on a leash pull.
Dogs have to be certified as capable of identifying the smell of certain narrow classes of substances, and is trained to respond to detection of those substances in an identifiable manner. An uncertified dog is basically a dog which finds some odor interesting, which may or may not belong to a proscribed material.
Dogs have to be certified and this dog’s certification expired in 2011. My understanding is that this dog has a track record of false hits. He needs to be retired. His handler and everybody involved need to be prosecuted.