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Supreme Court Hearing Case On Drug-Sniffing Dog "Fishing Expeditions"
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."
we have no use for fishing expedtions and it is a massive privacy invasion. police should be reactive and deal with imminent threats, not go fishing for pot smokers. god damn police state.
Can I light a sig ?
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.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Really? I see you are right, 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).
I've often wondered about this sort of thing. I imagine that a dog could probably identify the house from the road. If you live in an apartment and the landlord lets the cops into the halls with the dog. Identify the apartments with pot, and get a warrant for search of that apartment. 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.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
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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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
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.
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.)
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
As much as I find it hard to motivate myself to defend the police, it isn't up to them to set the law or decide which laws they decide to enforce. Your government, and the general population, deserve the blame for anything wrong with that.
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.
If the police are already in the house, searching, do they not need a warrant for that or were they invited in? If there is reasonable doubt why should the police not be perfectly within their rights to use a dog with a nose for drugs? after all, these dogs get it right the vast majority of the times. This was not some draconian misuse of power. the police were not abusing some guy because they thought he had a joint. A suspected drug dealer it says. Turns out he is a drug dealer that is now trying his best to get off on a technicality. Police also use sniffer dogs in public places to search for bombs as well as drugs and really, most of them give a great public service for yous and mine.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
Who said anything about trespassing? The dogs can smell shit from outside your property.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
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" calibre one or the smaller calibre, but faster firing one?
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.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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.
The dogs are trained to give the alert signal on a visual cue from their handler. This is not reasonable evidence that a crime has been committed. It is delegating the grave responsibility of violating a citizen's right to be protected from unwarranted search and seizure from a trained and responsible judge acting on sworn statements of an officer of the court to a dog trained to respond on cue. We may as well shred the fourth amendment.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Or the wind blowing in the opposite direction, or any of a number of things.
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!
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.
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 a trained dog. (Considering that drug sniffing dogs have more than 50% false positives it is not unlikely that the fortune teller will be better at picking up when the police officer is acting out of racism or some other BS than an actual hunch and provide a more accurate result.)
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.
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.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
But not very well, it would appear: http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/welcome/features/2010-2011/02/20110223_drug_dogs.html
Are you assuming the handler wants to avoid it?
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
That rule is pretty effective because it uses the motivations of the police (to get the bad guys) to keep thrn from violating the rights of citizens. There are a few bad cops, of course, but 99% are careful to not do an illegal search precisely because they want the evidence to be admissable. Cops and DAs don't talk about what's right and wrong, they are careful about what's admissable and what's not.
The dogs are entirely capable of alerting based not on the presence of anything illegal but based on it's handlers desire that it do so. One of the issues under consideration is exactly how accurate does a dog need to be to generate probable cause: police don't often record false positives, so there is no way of knowing if the dogs alert is evidence of anything other than the handlers state of mind.
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
The DOD does this, because they can on a base. Anyway when the US was still stationed in Panama someone would go get a $5 bag of coke from the taxi drivers and put it in floor wax. It was hilarious to watch the dog start barking at the floor and the MP’s would just give up and do the search the old fashioned way by going through all 250 soldiers’ stuff.
Congratulations, this must be one of the more ignorant comments I have seen on Slashdot in a long while.
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.
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.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
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 just wish the stupid republicans would stop being turd sandwiches and just make it legal and wrap it into the Tobacco and Alcohol rules.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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!
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.
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?
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
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? She looks like shes on drugs.
Yes, it's just the stupid republicans.
Except it shouldn't matter if I'm doing anything illegal as long as I'm in my home not hurting anyone. Just leave the people alone. If you promise not to wander around my property with a dog, I promise not to fill your and your dogs eyes full of mace. Fair?
In Colorado, a legalization measure is on the ballot. The Democratic current governor and the Republican former governor are doing ads together to oppose legalization. Tom Tancredo, a libertarian and otherwise nuts, is about the only high-profile politician on record as supporting it.
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?
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
You might find this story interesting.
And don't forget, dog can be very tasty. I understand that it's legal to hunt on your own property...
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
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.
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".
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.
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.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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.
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.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
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.
I am officially gone from
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!
Ezekiel 23:20
You are somewhat right. The Florida case doesn't actually deal with issues of "standing outside someone's property", though. The dog was lead to the defendant's front door and alerted after sniffing it. So there is an issue of whether police can lead an animal on to someone's property to sniff without a warrant, which I would argue they should no be allowed to do.
Obviously a police officer standing in a public area who sees something that amounts to probable cause can act on it. I don't really see why a police officer with a dog in a public area shouldn't be treated the same way. I do think that when it comes time to trial the prosecution should have to give evidence showing the dog's and handler's training and I think police departments should have to keep record of the dog's and handler's track records (false positives versus actual finds). From that a judge should determine whether evidence gained through their work is admissable. A legislative framework from each state outlining what kind of training and tack record should be considered reliable would go a long way towards making that determination easier.
You can compare the use of drug sniffing dogs to the use of devices but I would not compare dogs to infrared sensors; I'd compare them to something like binoculars. In a way, a dog enhances a police officer's sense of smell by proxy. Likewise, binoculars enhance a police officers sight whereas infrared sensors allow officers to see heat, which they cannot naturally do.
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.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
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.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
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 avoid a false positive, why was he so sure that the dog needed to have a go at me? He was dragging the dog by the leash to have a go at my suitcase and carry on. The pooch was clearly disinterested and I am 100% certain I wasn't carrying anything that would have triggered a reaction.
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 pot legalized (you can't regulate or control an illegal product), either vote Libertarian or Green; both those parties are for legalization, although I'd assume the Libbies would be less inclined to regulate it.
Free Martian Whores!
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.
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!
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
B-(
A friend will come and bail you out of jail, a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "damn that was fun!"
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 (all rates are per 100k)
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.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
"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.
Study after study and analysis after analysis 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.
The idea that "I don't care because I'm not doing anything wrong" has done as much to destroy freedom in this country than anything else in history.
YOU are the enemy.
"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 raffle tickets or tickets to the Policeman's Ball (yes, it is a real thing), because as it turned out they were prohibited by state law. Their fundraising is not "legitimate legal reason" to be on my property.
So... NO. They cannot just walk up to my front door with no reason. They are legally and specifically prohibited from doing so.