Choadzilla: Drug Sniffing dogs are always right, right? At least most of the time though, right?


Right?

I remember an occasion in junior high when a drug dog making a sweep of student lockers during classes hit on my friend's locker. Before she could be brought out of class and open the padlock, they crowbarred the door and let the dog go to town.....eating the hamburger in her lunch sack. No drugs were found, she had to get a new locker assignment at the ass-end of campus, and didn't even get comp'ed a lunch for the screw-up.

Gr8Zen: As far as I'm concerned, this is just plain site, extended to a dog, who is generally considered a fully-fledged officer.

Let's say an officer pulls over a car, finds nothing, but then looks at an nearby property and sees a giant greenhouse filled with cultivated marijuana plants. I doubt anyone here would have (legal) problems with that officer making a bust on that pot, which was clearly visible to him from the road. The pot in that shed was essentially just as visible to the dog as the greenhouse would be to a human officer.

Uisce Beatha: Happy Hours: As for the reliability of drug sniffing dogs, please cite your sources.

In studies, drug dogs have shown anywhere from a 44% to dismal 14.6% success rate (123 failures in 144 searches) - citation

I see nothing about a 14.6% success rate in that article, but thanks for the cite nonetheless.

In this case though, the dog seems to have gotten it right.

Headso:
I can't believe all these people talking about pot in a pot thread.

I was thinking more about Real Life(TM). Most people here seem to be discussing law, not pot, and jolly interesting it is, too.

CruiserTwelve: ImJustaTroll: This is getting ridiculous. They new the damn house sold weed. They didn't want to out their informant, so they made up this fake stop. "Oh look we just happened to get lucky with the dog" I know the cops think we're stupid but man this is a farce.

Why? If the cops suspected that they had dope at the house, why not just take the dog there for a sniff? There was no reason to do a fake traffic stop in front of the house.

Devils Advocate here - why can't the cops just search anywhere, anytime, for any reason?

CruiserTwelve:

Also,
FTLink: "Dog/handler teams correctly completed a search with no alerts in just 21 of the 144 walk-throughs. The other 123 searches produced an astounding 225 alerts, every one of them false." 123 false hits on 144 walk-throughs = 85.4% false positive alert, aka, 14.6% of the time they were correct

Any comment?

CruiserTwelve: ImJustaTroll: This is getting ridiculous. They new the damn house sold weed. They didn't want to out their informant, so they made up this fake stop. "Oh look we just happened to get lucky with the dog" I know the cops think we're stupid but man this is a farce.

Why? If the cops suspected that they had dope at the house, why not just take the dog there for a sniff? There was no reason to do a fake traffic stop in front of the house.

This is the same thing as shaking you down from top to bottom, having your car tossed, being forced to sit on the side of the road for half an hour. then having them tell you they pulled you over because "your license plate frame partly obscured the top 1/4 inch of the state name on your plate".

Happened to me a couple of years ago in south texas when I went down there for work purposes and came back within 24 hours. I mean come on, it fit the profile of a drug run, why not just tell me that instead of bullshiat me about it?

They have to invent probable cause, if they dont have it already. Got them pretty mad at me when I politely offered to take my toolkit from the trunk and remove the license plate frame in the interest of "safety" since it was such a serious thing.

They had ridden my a$$ for ten minutes and even put a car on the side of the road with its lights on, then tried to block me from moving over before they said "fark it" and started on their little game.

cman: This search was way beyond unreasonable.

Probably. The article isn't very clear.

FTFA : The discovery came after a deputy made a traffic stop in front of the home. The deputy smelled marijuana in the car, reportedly driven by Womack, and called for additional deputies and a drug-sniffing dog.

The dog did not smell drugs in the car but alerted deputies to the fence line of a nearby house.

Deputies eventually searched a shed at the home and found the marijuana, along with an illegal immigrant identified as Lopez-Zavala.


That part about "eventually searched a shed" makes it sound like they didn't go right in as soon as the dog started doing whatever drug dogs do. The article doesn't say if they got a warrant. Did they? If that "eventually" thing is because step one was "go get a warrant", then I'm fine with this. I have no idea if they could get a warrant under those circumstances or not, but if they went to a judge and a judge gave them a warrant, then I'm not going to biatch.

If they didn't have a warrant, this this is clearly an unconstitutional search.

Happy Hours: And while I think pot should be legal and no one should even be fined for possession or "manufacture" the current law says it is illegal and the cop did his job. No "hero" tag for the cop doing his job?

If the cop did this search without a warrant, then he broke the law and should be locked up. If he had a warrant, then I have no issue with it other than my generic "pot shouldn't be illegal" stance.

CruiserTwelve: Boatmech: CruiserTwelve:

Also,
FTLink: "Dog/handler teams correctly completed a search with no alerts in just 21 of the 144 walk-throughs. The other 123 searches produced an astounding 225 alerts, every one of them false." 123 false hits on 144 walk-throughs = 85.4% false positive alert, aka, 14.6% of the time they were correct

Any comment?

I confess that I know next to nothing about police dogs. It sounds like the dogs they tested didn't do too well. I don't know if it's fair to expand that study to indict all police dogs, or if the study is unique to the dogs tested.

21 out of 144 correctly did not give a positive alert.
C12, in those tests there were zero, as in NO positives to be found. The dogs were given nothing to alert on.

So why all the false alerts?

fnorgby: IDK, if the dog alerted on the fence on his own (like, "hey master, there's nothing in the car but this fence smells mighty interesting"), and this was used to support probable cause for a warrant, I bet nothing gets excluded and they're all boned.

Good faith doctrine, etc.

If the cop, frustrated at getting skunked on the car, took the dog to the nearby house and had him start sniffing, and they searched the shed with no warrant, then maybe exclusions (except for the woman caught with meth -- if she doesn't live there, she may have no standing to contest the legality of her arrest).

You don't require suspicion to march a dog around in public and let it sniff. No one has a reasonable expectation not to be smelled.

Dog alerts, rightly or wrongly, are sufficient for probable cause to search without a warrant.

MaudlinMutantMollusk: BarkingUnicorn: The funny part is that the cop smelled grass in the car but the dog didn't.

Personally, I smell bullshiat

Actually that supports the cop more than it hurts him. A human can catch a wiff on the breeze and not know the source. A dishonest or shiatty canine officer would have led his dog to alert on the car, not a nearby shed.

/drugs should be legal.

orbister: elffster: ... we should be giving out for free help to anyone who wants to get off any addicted/habitual use of a substance.

Doesn't that absolve people from exercising any self control? Doesn't it give out a message that it's OK to take anything you want, as often as you want, because the rest of us will pay for treatment any time you want?

I'm not a great fan of drug laws as they stand, but I think any relaxation should come with an understanding that dying in a gutter is a likely outcome of unwise consumption. It's about personal responsibility.

No, it doesn't send that message at all.

Smackledorfer: fnorgby: IDK, if the dog alerted on the fence on his own (like, "hey master, there's nothing in the car but this fence smells mighty interesting"), and this was used to support probable cause for a warrant, I bet nothing gets excluded and they're all boned.

Good faith doctrine, etc.

If the cop, frustrated at getting skunked on the car, took the dog to the nearby house and had him start sniffing, and they searched the shed with no warrant, then maybe exclusions (except for the woman caught with meth -- if she doesn't live there, she may have no standing to contest the legality of her arrest).

You don't require suspicion to march a dog around in public and let it sniff. No one has a reasonable expectation not to be smelled.

Dog alerts, rightly or wrongly, are sufficient for probable cause to search without a warrant.

Coin flips are more accurate. Why don't we just let cops flip a coin to determine whether they have probable cause or not? They'd be right more often, and it makes just as much sense.

Inside the residence there were several people who were temporarily detained. A search warrant was obtained, and inside the shed deputies found 25 bales of marijuana with an overall weight of over 430 pounds, along with a male individual who was later determined to be an illegal alien.

The driver of the vehicle, identified as Mashelle L. Womack (DOB 11/04/72), admitted to having transported the drugs to her residence and stored them there.

Sheriff's words.