Supreme Court Hearing Case On Drug-Sniffing Dog "Fishing Expeditions" 451
sgunhouse writes "Wired is running an article on a Supreme Court challenge (well, actually two of them) to the use of drug-sniffing dogs. The first case discussed involved Florida police using a drug-sniffing dog as a basis for searching a suspected drug dealer's home. The court in Florida excluded the evidence obtained from the search, saying a warrant should be required for that sort of use of a dog. Personally, I agree — police have no right to parade a dog around on private property on a 'fishing expedition', same as they need a warrant to use a thermal imaging device to search for grow houses. I have no use for recreational drugs, but they had better have a warrant if they want to bring a dog onto my property."
police should be reactive (Score:4)
Re:police should be reactive (Score:5, Insightful)
The organized crime will do far more damage then any pot smoker anyway.
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The organized crime will do far more damage
Damage to who? Certainly not to those benefiting from this state of affairs...
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The organized crime will do far more damage then any pot smoker anyway.
If the criminals are organized enough we call it a Government. Considering the average Politician's behavior, your statement is still correct.
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>If the criminals are organized enough we call it a Government.
Or a corporation.
Frankly these days the differences are getting too small to matter.
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Personally I'd rather go after the person doing the most harm to society. If you're not prepared to go after an armed thief or other violent criminals don't become a police officer.
I've had to go after both types (violent and non-violent) of criminal helping my dad bounty hunt. Can is be scary? Yes, but that's part of the job. You either learn to control your emotions or find another line of work.
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On the internet, no one knows you're Dog the Bounty Hunter!
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You're not being cynical enough: You're assuming the function of the police is to fight crime. The function of the police is social control.
You may not be able to bring a mugger to justice, but if enough muggings happen in an area... Setting up something like a speed trap, or some other "reactive" measurement, will give a presence that can deter future crime. Police do small time drug busts, not only to shake down additional federal war on drug funding, but to get CIs. Of course, its bullshit logic as the o
Re:police should be reactive (Score:5, Interesting)
In my experience the police don't bother to go out and preemptively fight even the easy crimes. They just sit at the station and wait for someone to come in a report a crime, then they spend 20 minutes trying to trick that person into admitting guilt (even if that person hasn't committed any crimes)
On 2 occasions I have gone with people to the police station to report thefts (a stolen car in one case) and after the police listened to the whole story, their first question was "so, you stole a car?" (in the other case it was a stolen helmet, and the first question was "so, you stole a helmet?")
Why bother putting in the effort to investigate existing crimes when you can just invent a reason to arrest the person standing in front of you. As far as the police are concerned, guilt or innocence doesn't matter as long as SOMEONE goes to jail. After that it becomes the court's problem, the police still meet their monthly arrest quota (and they do have a quota, however much they deny it: http://blog.motorists.org/if-you-didnt-believe-ticket-quotas-existed-before-you-will-now/ [motorists.org])
Warrant for looking at your house with IR? (Score:4, Interesting)
Really? I see you are right [wikipedia.org], but that does sound strange to me, living in the Netherlands. Here it's a standard way for the police to track down the growers (even though selling small quantities is half-legal here).
Re:Warrant for looking at your house with IR? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a difficult problem in the US. Although marijuana is illegal here it is by far the number one cash crop [drugscience.org] in the US - ahead of wheat, barley, corn, soybeans and everything else. It is also one of our largest imports and a significant portion of our balance of international trade. Somehow we have not learned the lessons of prohibition. [wikipedia.org]
I don't care for the product myself but man, this is crazy.
Re:Warrant for looking at your house with IR? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes, like alcohol.
I'm not sure what point you are trying to make, but alcohol is pretty darn cheap in the USA. Compare the cost of a can of cheap soda ($0.50, give or take) to a can of cheap beer ($0.80, give or take). Then factor in the alcohol taxes which go to the state and Federal government for the beer. In many states, revenue from alcohol/cigarette taxes are a major portion of the state's revenue.
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The fact that you say it's the standard way for the police to track indoor gardeners, is exactly what I think makes it a problem in USA. If a detection tech is solely a "cop thing" then whatever it detects isn't what any layman would consider public information, so government using that detection tech against its people without a warrant, is against the law. It's "unreasonable search."
If lots of people walked around with IR goggles on all the time, so that it was common knowledge (not just among cops) whi
Better have a a warrent or what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, and cops come onto your property with a dog, and don't have a warrant, what are you going to do? If you shoot them, they'll shoot you. If you sue them, you'll lose. If you put up with it it, well, that's what you'll have to do.
It's rigged against you. Everything is. In Britain (at least England & Wales) a cop has never been found guilty of illegally killing someone during the course of their job. So, if you want a license to kill, just join an English police force. But in most other places (including the USA and Australia), cops also literally get away with murder.
And you think that a little bit of searching without a warrant is going to bother them? Even if the case against a suspect is thrown out because the evidence was collected illegally, the filth involved will not have any sanctions against them. Think about that. They can bust down your door, shoot your dog, and plant drugs, with no repercussions.
And no use for recreational drugs? So no alcohol? You don't smoke a ciggie every now and again? Or a pipe or a cigar? (Personally I don't use illegal drugs, but that's only 'cause I'm too lazy to seek them out. If they were on sale down at the local bottlo along with the whisky, brandy and fine liqueurs I'd buy some.)
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Also, the summary is a bit over the top. This isn't about dogs being used on private property without a warrant; this is about a dog being outside, on public property, indicating that it can smell drugs inside, and then a warrant being obtained based on that "evidence". Which the article is (rightly in my humble opinion) linking to using thermal-imaging devices form outside a house without a warrant. What if fancy particle detectors could be used in the same way? So, no dog, just more technology? Can the po
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Personally I'm always in favor of less power for the police, and more power for the people. (I'm also strongly in favor of capital punishment for politicians.)
You forgot the lawyers. With patent/copyright ones as a special case.
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So they question is does an alert from a dog constitute evidence strong enough to meet the probal cause standard? What if I come up with a method to detect drugs or anything else that is utter bullshit? I have this rock that when released will fall towards the earth if there is pot near by, well look drop like a stone. I had better search every house on the block and pay down all the attractive women just to be safe.
Personally I am not optimistic, this court has not adopted rigors eviduciary requirements
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Obviously, you don't use a rock, you use a wand [bbc.co.uk]. It works - even if it doesn't work - by giving you a justification to search any car you want.
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The key component is "plain view', thermal enhanced imaging is not plain view, and trained dogs are not plain smell. If the officer can smell your pot without a dog, you will still have issues.
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>I'm also strongly in favor of capital punishment for politicians.
You mean entering politics should be a capital crime ? I could get behind that idea...
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A search is a search. A dog's nose is just a searching device. If precedent is established for dogs already, it's pretty much automatically establish for laser-spectrometry based violations of the 4th amendment (and believe me, that's coming, in addition to drone-surveillance-based violations (already here) and AI-driven activity recognition based violations). And precedence for dogs (and drones) are already established, so we're pretty much f0cked, to be honest, as long as immoral sociopaths are running ou
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Police in mainland Britain do not carry firearms by default. The police do have access to lethal weaponry, but it's only carried in airports or in response to reports of armed crime.
Wikipedia has a list of people killed by police in the UK. If you discount the ones that happened in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, it has a grand total of 15 people killed by police since 1920.
I do not feel scared by that number.
Re:Better have a a warrent or what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wikipedia has a list of people killed by police in the UK. If you discount the ones that happened in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, it has a grand total of 15 people killed by police since 1920.
I do not feel scared by that number.
I'm not sure which numbers you were looking at, but I think they are rather a lot higher than that, even if not officially acknowledged as such. Possibly you have confused "being shot by the police" with "being killed by the police" (although even then the number is far, far higher than that).
Between 2000 and 2011 there were nearly 6,000 deaths in police custody [independent.gov.uk] in the UK. Now, some (perhaps even many or most) of those will be unavoidable - perhaps people who would have died anyway even if not in police custody. Then, some are down to negligence (although I'd argue that in many case that is just as bad as malfeasance - if I was at home and vulnerable to some medical condition e.g. diabetes then it's much more likely someone would be around who would watch and look after me properly). But I find it very difficult to believe that given such a large number of cases there is no significant element of either bad intent or intentinoal recklessness, because it really is a shockingly high number - for context, it is not terribly far off the total number of murders recorded in the UK in the same period.
Looking just at shootings - there seem to be on average about 6 or 7 a year in recent years - e.g. here is a list [dailymail.co.uk] of some of them. There are in fact multiple recent cases where the police have literally shot naked and unarmed people (and faced only relatively minor consequences as a result) and several more where they have shot unarmed people. Even in this case [wikipedia.org], which would appear to be about as clear-cut a case as they come, the officers were acquitted and retained their jobs in the police, albeit not on firearm duties.
Finally, I'd like to say that the fact that police can apparently get away with murder should worry you, for two reasons. Firstly - not because you might be murdered by the police yourself (that is still very unlikely), but because it means they might be likely to get away with far lesser crimes (like assaulting you, planting drugs on you, or making up a traffic offence because they decide they don't like the look of you) much more easily. Secondly - because it is indicative of a force who don't see their primary loyalty as being to the victims of crime (and to thus solving crime) but rather to looking after their own. If you were a victim of crime, would you want a force where the officers thought people who didn't pull their weight to solve it effectively should be protected from public scrutiny?
If anything, we should be holding police officers, especially firearms officers, to a higher standard than we do the general public because we grant them additional powers and privileges and entrust them to use those responsibly while paying them out of the public purse.
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So, if you want a license to kill, just join an English police force.
That's some pretty strong hyperbole there, given the number of police caused deaths.
That said, they *do* get away with murder, and the other police always get away with successfully perverting the course of justice, even when overwhelming evidence to the contrary appears, like a video taken by a tourist and posted from abroad.
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In Britain (at least England & Wales) a cop has never been found guilty of illegally killing someone during the course of their job. So, if you want a license to kill, just join an English police force.
And here I was, believing the concept of having "00" in front of your spy code were mere fiction...
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>And here I was, believing the concept of having "00" in front of your spy code were mere fiction...
Real world: it is and it isn't.
There aren't any spies like old Bond - but on occasion the real spies (who are basically professional bribe-payers mostly attached to embassies) come across situations that merit immediate covert paramilitary action.
The spies do not engage in this. They pass it up the chain. Officially the minister of defence makes the decision - in practise he probably wouldn't dare to do so
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If you're busily chatting to PC Plod over a cup of tea in your living room and happen to have left your bong on the kitchen table, you can expect a dog to turn up pretty quick. The mistake you made was
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Where to draw the line (Score:5, Insightful)
As to whether getting a warrant based on a sniffer dog is right. It really is hard to say; personally I think there should be a standard of a reasonable expectation of privacy but that becomes very hard to define. If a police officer overheard a conversation about bomb making through an open window when passing should it not be investigated? How about a large quantity of peroxide bottles left next to a bin visible at the side of the house. If a dog trained to detect explosives goes batshit crazy outside of a house should it be ignored? Most people accept that things that can be seen or heard from public property aren't private; how about if they are only visible/audible if using advanced equipment and manipulation (to for example filter sound). Is a smell emanating from a property supposed to be ignored? I doubt the police officer who ignored a strong burning smell and left someone to die would be praised.
Re:Where to draw the line (Score:5, Insightful)
it isn't up to them to set the law or decide which laws they decide to enforce.
The hell it isnt. The police are moral actors and "just following orders" is not and has never been an acceptable excuse.
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This is already addressed in the law today -there are two clearly stated exceptions where a police officer is allowed (and even expected) to enter private property WITHOUT a warrant.
Your examples:
>How about a large quantity of peroxide bottles left next to a bin visible at the side of the house.
That's a perfect example of the first exemption in the law: probably cause. The officer have genuine solid reason to believe that this particular property is a crime scene and limited time to respond. It's still b
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No it isn't and frankly pretending that the police force is just like any old business is naive at best.
I don't want the police deciding what people can or can't get into trouble for. For all the whining you do about the lack of democratic process in government it isn't like just handing control over the matter to the police directly somehow makes it more accountable. The people, via the government, should decide what is or isn't legal; the police should, within the bound
Reasonable doubt (Score:2)
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The cops were not "already in the house", they did not have a warrant, nor were they invited it. They walked fido past the door, said that he detected drugs, and then kicked down the door claiming that they had "probable cause".
If they had evidence to indicate that this person was a drug dealer, they should have gone to the courts and gotten a warrant.
This was not a public place, it was the guy's home.
USA Land of Crime (Score:2, Interesting)
In the rest of the world, justice comes before anything else. No matter how evidence is obtained, it is still evidence, and will be used in court.
In the US, if an unskilled policeman makes a small mistake, all evidence will be thrown down the sink, and the criminals who would be convicted on that evidence in every other country of the world, will walk free. I don't understand this protection of people where there is evidence that they are criminals.
Re:USA Land of Crime (Score:5, Insightful)
It's pretty simple, really. Throwing out evidence that was illegally acquired is the only tool available to ensure that evidence is not illegally acquired. After a team of police officers, investigators and lawyers have been working on a case, putting their efforts into it, they do not want to have the case fall apart, so there is, theoretically, some peer pressure on them not to screw up the evidence.
Without this incentive not to break the law, we would have police going house to house, knocking on doors, busting down the doors that don't open to them, and performing full-house searches, just looking for something, anything, to create criminal cases on. We had this in our pre-revolutionary state, and our Constitution was written to prevent it, amongst other abuses.
Re:USA Land of Crime (Score:4, Insightful)
In the rest of the world, people generally live under oppressive regimes who don't think twice about breaking their own laws to obtain or manufacture evidence to convict people they perceive as enemies of the State.
In the USA, the rights of the individual are protected unlike anywhere else in the world. Your attitude indicates you have never lived under a free system, because if you had, your own opinion would be repugnant to you.
I would rather see 100 guilty men go free than see one innocent person convicted, and that is precisely the way our system is designed - to place the importance of preserving an innocent man's freedom above the importance of taking away a guilty man's freedom.
Re:USA Land of Crime (Score:5, Informative)
In the USA, the rights of the individual are protected unlike anywhere else in the world. Your attitude indicates you have never lived under a free system, because if you had, your own opinion would be repugnant to you.
And yet, the US imprisons more people than any other country in the world. That holds if you measure per capita, or even count the total. The US as a land of freedom and opportunity is a complete and utter myth today, if it was ever true.
I would rather see 100 guilty men go free than see one innocent person convicted, and that is precisely the way our system is designed - to place the importance of preserving an innocent man's freedom above the importance of taking away a guilty man's freedom.
Except that well over 90% of people charged with federal crimes ever see a trial. Is it because they are just that accurate? No, it's because they punish people for exercising their right to a trial, by cutting them breaks if they forfeit that right.
Face it, the US is an authoritarian hell hole with very little to recommend it above other authoritarian hell holes. The idea that the US is exceptional in any way when it somes to freedom, liberty, justice, the voice of the people, is all baseless jingoistic nonsense.
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And yet, the US imprisons more people than any other country in the world. That holds if you measure per capita, or even count the total. The US as a land of freedom and opportunity is a complete and utter myth today, if it was ever true.
Ordinarily, I'm all for a good roasting of our country. There's so very many things to choose from! But this isn't one of them. The per capita rate of imprisonment has little to do with the freedoms and opportunities present here, if anything. A high incarceration rate doesn't erase our public education system or other social programs. It doesn't counter our large economy, which despite its recent faltering still brings tens of thousands of people a year into the country (legally and illegally) to start a b
Re:USA Land of Crime (Score:4, Informative)
There have been a number of cases over the years where U.S. cops were caught planting narcotics and arresting innocent people--usually non-natives who speak little or no English. I think it's fairly safe to assume that not every such occurrence was discovered and aired on the media, so who knows whether this is a rare anomaly or if it's pervasive? Our culture tends to assume people in prison are guilty and we're unlikely to ever hear from or about "those monsters" again--well unless someone is exonerated after serving 20 years of a life sentence for a crime they didn't commit.
Our present legal system does not favor the acquittal of 100 guilty over the conviction of one innocent. It's a lofty and noble idea, but it is pure fiction. Unless you are essentially indigent or are charged with a capital crime, you most likely are going to have to pay for your own legal counsel. So say you are charged with possession, with intent to distribute, narcotics. Whether you're guilty or not, once you've taken out a 2nd or 3rd mortgage to post bond; you'll have to retain an attorney who will be racking up the billable hours long before you ever get your day in court. There'll be the discovery process and pretrial hearings. If you still have a dime to your name after that, then will be the jury selection process which will add the cost of those jury consultants to your tab. Then you get to trial and you add the cost of all those expert witnesses on your behalf to your tab. Hopefully this results in your acquittal, in which case you hopefully still have a job after all that time off trying to clear your name. You still have that arrest record though, probably going to have a few more billable hours trying to get that expunged. Or were you convicted? Well you can appeal, but you no longer have the "presumption of innocence". and thus you can't simply have the case retried, rather you can argue that the evidence and/or testimony presented wasn't valid; so good luck with that one!
Now that you see it may cost a few hundred thousand or more to try to clear your name without guarantee of success, your attorney will suggest accepting a plea bargain--simple possession perhaps? You can serve 4-6 months in minimum security prison, drug rehab program, 3 years probation, and then you can try to rebuild your life again trying to land a job, flat broke, but hopefully not too deeply in debt, with the drug conviction on your record. This is how over 2/3rd of indictments are settled! Innocent or guilty, doesn't matter. This is the legal system we have today, and the only real hope of keeping your livelihood intact with minimal damage is to have a huge bankroll to work with--something that's probably easier to do if you actually happen to be a drug kingpin.
So the perverse reality is: one guilty person walks for every 100 innocent/guilty who go to jail.
It works to keep police and DA in line 99% (Score:2)
Re:USA Land of Crime (Score:4, Informative)
Actually a trial can easily collapse if evidence was not properly obtained in the UK as well. Most countries do not allow illegally obtained evidence to be used in trials because it would encourage people to illegally obtain evidence.
I have no use for recreational drugs (Score:2)
I have no use for recreational drugs
Why do we feel compelled to pre-emptively deny allegations? Why do absolute shits feel compelled make false allegations? Why do we let us be fooled by false allegations? Even geeks -the ones seeking facts or accepting them anyway- are sometimes fooled by false allegations...
Solution: own a dog as a pet (Score:3)
Dogs are so endlessly fascinated with each other, the drug sniffers would be too enthralled and distracted to find anything ;)
Joking aside, the court should most definitely conclude that such unwarranted searches are unconstitutional. It may be an extremely small victory, but it's a start.
Curtilage and Class in America (Score:2)
Based on an initial read, this sounds like a question of curtilage [wikipedia.org], although I didn't see that term in the article.
Curtilage is the legal definition of what part of your property is private, and what is not. If the dog was not on a public street, then this is a curtilage case.
My understanding of recent SCOTUS cases is that they view curtilage in a way that, shall we say, is more favorable to the way the rich typically live than the poor. If you have a fence around your property, with a gate, then the whole
False positives (Score:3)
These dogs are trained to fined drugs, but they're also trained with commands that can make them give a false positive anytime the cop feels like screwing around with you. If the signal for "There are some drugs in here" is a bark and a slap of the paw, the dog can easily be trained to exhibit that behavior with a simple verbal command of the handler.
Allowing this BS to stand is effectively the same as allowing arbitrary search.
Re:Did the cop got fired? (Score:4, Informative)
The Supreme Court on Wednesday is set to hold oral arguments concerning the novel question of whether judges may issue search warrants for private residences when a drug-sniffing dog outside the home reacts as if it smells drugs inside.
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Re:Did the cop got fired? (Score:5, Funny)
I, as a person with a not so keen sense of smell, can tell you which apartments have pot in them if you walk by at the right time of day.
You don't have to hide it. On the internet no one knows you're a dog.
Re:Did the cop got fired? (Score:4, Funny)
I, as a person with a not so keen sense of smell, can tell you which apartments have pot in them if you walk by at the right time of day.
You don't have to hide it. On the internet no one knows you're a dog.
Is it just me, or have you just made a statement AND refuted it at the same time by making it? Bravo, sir!
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It's easy, you smell someone smoking pot, and look for the guy puffing away on his fatty sitting on the front porch. Some days at the grocery store I almost get a contact high from the potheads on a munchy run.
Wait, I'm being insensitive... The "medical patients" who are taking their "medication".
I don't want pot to be illegal, but it needs to be regulated like alcohol. If you go to the store drunk as hell it is as rude as going there completely baked, and you have a major problem if you do that.
I j
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Wait isn't the president a democrat? Has he recommended legalizing medical marijuana? Did harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi bring this to the floors for a vote when they had a majority?
How about the head of the DEA? [youtube.com] She looks like shes on drugs.
Yes, it's just the stupid republicans.
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I don't want pot to be illegal, but it needs to be regulated like alcohol.
Of course it should; kids shouldn't be smoking pot or ingesting any psychoactive substance.
If you go to the store drunk as hell it is as rude as going there completely baked
Some people are like that when they're stone cold sober.
I just wish the stupid republicans would stop being turd sandwiches and just make it legal and wrap it into the Tobacco and Alcohol rules.
The Democrats are as much anti-reffer as the Republicans. If you want p
Re:Did the cop got fired? (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing is, dogs are eager to please. You dont even have to try to train them to alert whenever their handler is suspicious - they do that naturally. So the way this works is, the cop's 'gut' isnt sufficient to get a warrant, he needs some evidence not just a hunch. So he just gets the dog, who naturally picks up on the handlers state of mind and will alert as a result, neatly giving that initial hunch credibility and transforming it into 'evidence' which can justify a search.
It's a neat solution to those for whom the Constitution and the fundamentals of our legal system are 'problems' I suppose. Now the only question is whether the Supremes will give this workaround their stamp of approval immediately or send it back down the ranks for some tweaking.
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Re:Did the cop got fired? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Did the cop got fired? (Score:5, Insightful)
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You mean the "Clever Hans" effect where the handler provides the cues instead of the smell? It's a know issue, both handlers and dogs are trained to try and avoid it.
Oh, they are trained for it alright. The problem is, the pigs actually follow that training.
You have the internet, go look up some of the anecdotal stories of people watching the pigs sniff around their cars at a traffic stop for mounds of first impressions "gee, it sorta looked like the handler ordered the dog to signal", for the pigs to then find nothing after turning out and partially destroying the contents of the car.
Re:Did the cop got fired? (Score:4, Insightful)
One only hopes the "pigs" ignore you when you call 911 when someone is breaking into your house.
So they can show up 20 minutes too late? No thanks.
If you're smart, the only reason you would need to call 911 after a break in is to let them know where to come pick up the bodies.
Re:Did the cop got fired? (Score:5, Insightful)
Much like homoeopaths are trained to avoid the placebo effect?
As long as they don't send the dogs in alone without communicating with them, I don't think they can get away from the effect being attributable to the handler [springerlink.com].
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Really? Didn't seem like it when I was getting back off my honeymoon. I wasn't searched, but the the cop at the airport really wanted "snoopy" to investigate me further.
I will say that I am sure that I stood out from the crowd. Hair bleached from 2 years of Mexico sun, face and arms equally tanned. I was also dressed head to toe in traditional white cotton Jarocho clothing. I probably was extra haggard from a severe second degree sunburn all across my back and shoulders.
If the handler was trained to avoi
Re:Did the cop got fired? (Score:4, Informative)
"You mean the "Clever Hans" effect where the handler provides the cues instead of the smell? It's a know issue, both handlers and dogs are trained to try and avoid it."
No, they are usually not, and even when they are, they are still notoriously, and ridiculously, unreliable [ucdavis.edu].
Study after study [smh.com.au] and analysis after analysis [chicagotribune.com] prove you wrong.
Drug-sniffing dogs are TERRIBLE at their jobs. In the Chicago review of actual police statistics, the average reliability of drug-sniffing dogs was only 44% true positives (vastly too small a number to qualify as probable cause), and in the case of one minority (can you say "Handler bias?" Sure, I knew you could) it was only 27%. That's not theory, those are actual historical figures.
Unless some vastly better method of training comes up, drug-sniffing dogs need to be taken out of the picture. They are responsible for a huge amount of injustice in this country.
Re:Did the cop got fired? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Did the cop got fired? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Did the cop got fired? (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks for posting that, as I was reading comments I clearly remembered reading studies on dog based detection and particularly the ones talked about here (lol only 21 of 144 walkthroughs successfully detected nothing, with the rest generating an average of around 2 false positives per search!)
These numbers say to me that these dogs are little more than props which give excuses. A sort of dowsing rod for drugs.
Re:If you care your probably in wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
YOU are the enemy.
Re:Did the cop got fired? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you aren't doing anything illegal, you have nothing to worry about
If you aren't doing anything illegal and the present and all future authorities are completely benign and the present and all future authorities never make mistakes, you have nothing to worry about..
Worried yet?
Re:Did the cop got fired? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are approximately 4,450 federal crimes, and that doesn't include state, county, and city crimes. You are almost surely a criminal, and you don't even know it. In my town many people have gotten snagged for throwing away a water heater, or the box it came in. That is not illegal, however it is illegal to replace a water heater without having a city inspection. The fine is thousands of dollars, and then you have to bring up everything to code in your house for your water heater. Now people throw water heaters and boxes in their neighbors dumpsters. How would you feel if the police saw that in your alley from someone else, and decided to bust your door down, and found an illegally replaced heater from the previous owner of your house putting you on the hook for thousands of dollars?
People just don't think this shit through.
Re:Did the cop got fired? (Score:4, Informative)
If you aren't doing anything illegal, you have EVERYTHING to worry about!
Cops don't 'interview' legal people. Just ask them!
When you are in the presence of an officer, you are the only person in that situation that has any liability. The BEST case scenario is that nothing happens. Everything else will cost you. Inconvenience at a minimum. Torture at the worst. And death somewhere in between.
To be in the presence of someone who has no liability, who immediately demands that you be responsible for their emotional state by lethal force, is one of the most dangerous situations you could be in. Especially if you are legal.
DO NOT TALK TO COPS!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc [youtube.com]
B-(
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Last time I heard if you shoot a police dog you get a very similar treatment as if you had shot a police officer. I'm a big proponent of the second amendment, but you gotta use your head and act rationally!
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"It is not "trespassing" to just come onto someones property and come to the door, just like a trick-or-treater would."
Yes, it is. Police are specifically prohibited from certain activities that the general public can perform with impunity (or "immunity", if you want to think of it that way).
A police officer may not come onto my property unless they (A) are investigating a crime report or domestic disturbance, (B) are invited by the owner or resident, or (C) have a search warrant. In other words, they have to have legal justification.
Where I live, police had to abandon their practice of going door-to-door to sell raff
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It's not grey area, if the cops are trespassing on your property to make use of the dogs, why not let them go all the way around the house and peer in your windows? It's one thing to look through windows from a publicly accessible vantage point, and quite another to trespass in order to peer in.
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Re:Did the cop got fired? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Did the cop got fired? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, a hippie I know cleans his pipes in alcohol. This leaves an incredibly odoriferous sludge, extract of burnt pot smell, condensed yuck.
Then he drips it around the neighborhood for blocks around just for the drug dogs. He did the courthouse area once for a joke too. I don't know how long this stuff lasts, but I would imagine a dog could smell it for months. Peeeeeyouuuuuu!
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Also consider:
Airport shuttle seats, taxi seats
School busses (often they are parked together somewhere and the windows negligently left open)
Police vehicles (a bit risky to pull off)
The soap supply barrel at the car wash, or those big turning brushes at the car wash
etc.
The whole world should smell like pot!
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Who said anything about trespassing? The dogs can smell shit from outside your property.
Studies show that the dog is more likely to react on the handlers behaviour than the actual scent. [tillmanbraniff.com]
This is not really that different than a police officer going to a fortune teller to get a basis for a warrant. Just like the dog, the fortune teller will try to pick up some clue from the police officer of what kind of response he expects and respond accordingly.
Yes, you will get a lot of correct positives, just like you get with a trained dog. You will also get a lot of false positives, just like you get from
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Or the wind blowing in the opposite direction, or any of a number of things.
Re:Did the cop got fired? (Score:5, Interesting)
Cops NEVER get fired. NEVER. Not unless there is a ton of publicity and the mayor is forced to demand it. You cant get fired from the worlds largest gang.
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In an ideal world this would be flamebait.
Unfortunately, it's not even insightful as we're all completely aware of this and no longer even stop and think "bloody hell, he's right".
Re:Did the cop got fired? (Score:5, Interesting)
An illustrative case: Seattle Policeman Ian Birk approaches a 50-year-old man named John T Williams in broad daylight on a public street. Williams' crime? Carrying a woodcarving knife, shuffling along and minding his own business. No witness other than Birk thought Williams presented any kind of threat. Birk spends approximately 3-4 seconds yelling at Williams to drop the knife (never identifying himself as police), then shoots Williams 4 times in the back from about 15 feet away as the mostly deaf Williams had stopped to try to figure out what was going on.
In the aftermath, Birk was cleared of all charges. However, after lots of public outcry and the police department saying that he violated regulations, Birk decided to quit.
Re:Did the cop got fired? (Score:4, Insightful)
An illustrative case: Seattle Policeman Ian Birk approaches a 50-year-old man named John T Williams in broad daylight on a public street. Williams' crime? Carrying a woodcarving knife, shuffling along and minding his own business. No witness other than Birk thought Williams presented any kind of threat. Birk spends approximately 3-4 seconds yelling at Williams to drop the knife (never identifying himself as police), then shoots Williams 4 times in the back from about 15 feet away as the mostly deaf Williams had stopped to try to figure out what was going on.
In the aftermath, Birk was cleared of all charges. However, after lots of public outcry and the police department saying that he violated regulations, Birk decided to quit.
A better case for the re-emergence of lynch mobs, I have not heard.
Re:Did the cop got fired? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is bullshit I am sick of this cops put their life on the line crap, the data does not support it. In 2010 according to the bureau of labor statistics workplace fatalities report there were 545 work related deaths of workers classified as Management occupations, 261 work related deaths of Protective service occupations (inc fire, police, security guards, etc.) One could argue that the rate per 100k is high for Protective service occupations (7.4%) vs management (3.4%) but that ignores the 7% for repair and maintenance occupations, 11% death rate for construction occupations, 14.2% for transportation occupations, and 25.3% for Farming, fishing, and forestry occupations. We can dig deeper and see that all government occupations have workplace fatalities at a rate of 2.2%.
Police and fire jobs are not dangerous, they just pound their chest and proclaim that they are heroes and deserve to be worshiped. If risk of death is what makes you a hero in our society, lets worship the farmers, fishers, and foresters. Without them we really would be dead.
Source: http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cfoi_revised10.pdf [bls.gov] (all rates are per 100k)
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Exactly.
Dogs with a human handler are too open to abuse. The handler may intentionally or unintentionally signal the dog, so it then indicates, and they then have permission to do a search. If a dog cannot be calibrated, and the accuracy known, it should not be used for law enforcement.
Re:As good as lie detectors? (Score:5, Insightful)
Dogs have an almost insanely good sense of smell. For a dog to smell a bag of narcotics is about as hard as for you to smell if somebody opened a bottle of ammonia under your nose. The big problem is getting the smell out of your nose.
Training a drug sniffing (or any type of ID dog) involves teaching the dog first to identify a number of substances and then "mark" them. Marking is typically done either by the dog freezing and pointing with the nose, or sitting down. For a dog to be qualified you have a number of tests. Tests here involves the dog having to search 12 people, some of whom who may carry narcotics. Those not carrying narcotics get identical objects to hide on their persons. The handler, and the person holding the object, does not know if it is the real deal or not until after the test. If the dog misses a person, or marks the wrong person, it, and the handler, fails to qualify. And, yes, it's not unusual with a lineup where nobody carries anything.
A similar test often used is when a luggage band at an airport, where the dog must mark the specific bags containing explosives or narcotics. So the dogs and handlers certainly have to prove that they are able both to identify the substance and and that they know when it's not there.
Dogs are not infallible.They get tired, bored and exhausted just like their handlers. But it's not just a matter of a 'trained' officer having an 'opinion' about if the dog found something.
Re:As good as lie detectors? (Score:5, Informative)
A similar test often used is when a luggage band at an airport, where the dog must mark the specific bags containing explosives or narcotics. So the dogs and handlers certainly have to prove that they are able both to identify the substance and and that they know when it's not there.
That's all well and good in a training situation, but in the real world dogs learn how to please their handlers. Dogs are smart enough to fake a tell when their master really wants a search. We can see that this is true, because drug dog accuracy varies as a function of the suspect's race [chicagotribune.com].
So take your "ignorant" comment and shove it up your ass, bootlicker. In actual practice, a K9 unit is a blank warrant to search anyone.
Re:Unwarranted police trespass? (Score:4, Insightful)
Shoot 'em.
Sweet! An internet tough guy thread!
Hey guys, I'm after advice.
I want to tool up to blast the varmints to kindome come when the police state invades my castle!
Should I go for the 24.8" [wikipedia.org] calibre one or the smaller calibre, but faster firing one [wikipedia.org]?
Yes the cops need due process. No, there's no reason for pot to be illegal. Yes, it should be legal to blast to hell an unidentified intruder who busts into your house even if they later turn out to be cops, since you had no way of knowing and yes, that's a great way to get either killed on the spot or suffer a mysterious accident in custody.
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Hostile invaders rushing into your house are hard to qualify. A person forcing entry is de-facto hostile invader. Every extra moment you take to make a self-defense decision puts you, personally, at risk; every moment you neglect to utilize to process and analyze the situation increases risk of unnecessary action against a benign intruder. So if you shoot from the hip, you're most likely to protect yourself in the case of a hostile invader; if you wait and try to identify them and make sense, you're most
Nice try, boozer (Score:2, Insightful)
You can try and invent imaginary rights and legal rulings to justify drug use, but at the end of the day, it's dumb.
I would need a lot of convincing to understand why the police would need to get PERMISSION to use IR gear in public to find grow houses (as if the IR signature of your house has some kind of right to privacy): they do it all the time in the UK, and only bikers, gangsters, druggies and idiots would have a problem with it.
First off: All Right Are Imaginary. They're fairly arbitrary as well. Fuck your perception of which "rights" others should have. This is about wasting money on pointless witch-hunts to me. I want them to get a permit before they spend my tax money to fly their helicopters at night over my house while they're distracted by thermal imaging. That permit needs to be issued by a judge after considering evidence that warrants the investigation, not green-lighted based on a whim.
Furthermore: Alcohol is a Dru
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Since I don't do illegal recreational drugs, I don't need to justify it and I don't care if the idiots who do justify it or not. Whether or not cops get to stomp around my home tearing the place apart because fido scratched its ear (or officer plod says fido scratched its ear) is a whole 'nother question.
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>I would need a lot of convincing to understand why the police would need to get PERMISSION to use IR gear in public to find grow houses (as if the IR signature of your house has some kind of right to privacy): they do it all the time in the UK, and only bikers, gangsters, druggies and idiots would have a problem with it.
And people like me, who do not particularly want the cops to watch my silhouette fucking my fiance doggy style through the wall.
If I want to be watched, I leave the curtains open. If the
Re:This is why we threw the British out (Score:4, Insightful)
America is peculiar, in that unlike the rest of the world, it has the bizarre hyper-individualistic quasi-religion of virtually unlimited freedom without responsibility.
Not at all. When you infringe on the rights of others, you should be held accountable. Nothing about the production, possession, or consumption of Cannabis infringes on anyones rights.
Only a truly deluded Slashdot libertarian keyboard warrior would think that giving police powers to investigate suspicious activity would somehow violate their "rights" to break the law, be antisocial, and attack the common good, as if the "common good" didn't matter.
Only a truly deluded fascist would think that Cannabis prohibition has anything to do with the common good, as Cannabis has been repeatedly shown to be less harmful on every measure than substances we tolerate happily. It's less addictive than caffeine. Less toxic than aspirin. It's more weakly correlated with mental illness than cat ownership.
No, Cannabis prohibition has nothing to do with the common good, and everything to do with giving the authorities a blanket excuse to persecute undesirables. This is why the US has more black men in chains today than it ever had under slavery. This is why drug dogs magically get less accurate when the suspect is hispanic. And this is congruent with the historical record. Cannabis prohibition was sold to the public based on racism. It was racist in the thirties, and it's racist today.
What's morally bankrupt is promoting a policy for the "common good" when it's so demontrably harmful, and refusing to seriously consider alternatives to that policy.
Re:Generally (Score:5, Funny)
Having an animal that's just as likely to get excited about smelling my butthole and crotch become an authoritarian figure in any kind of a crime investigation is simply ridiculous.
What does the TSA have to do with any of this?