Topic: War on Drugs
When Sgt. Fido is Wrong How effective are drug-sniffing dogs, anyway?by RS Davis
(libertarian)
Friday, October 3, 2008
Drug-sniffing dogs have become as ubiquitous as internet porn, and it is widely assumed that they are effective. But how effective are they, really? Recent cases out of Florida indicate perhaps their efficacy has been greatly exaggerated.
In the spotlight right now are two dogs, named Talon and Zuul, who have been proven to be accurate - at best - only half the time.
In the case of Talon, Manatee County Circuit Judge Debra Johnes Riva concluded that she had no choice but to throw out evidence based on his track record of false "hits." Fifty percent is no proper standard for law enforcement.
In the case of Zuul (the dog, not the Ghostbusters villain), Sarasota County Circuit Judge Charles Roberts came to a different conclusion, saying that Zuul sniffing drugs was no different than an officer getting a whiff of wacky tobbacky when you roll down your window - there may not be any drugs present, but that doesn't make you innocent.
Law enforcement was excited by that decision - Sarasota County Police Department Sergeant Brian Olree commented that if they had ruled as Manatee County, it would have been "catastrophic to the way we've been doing business."
Of course it would. What would the police do if they didn't have such an easy way around the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures?
The allowability of these blatant abuses of American rights was enshrined in the law in the 2005 case Illinois v. Caballes, where the Supreme Court determined that using drug dogs was not a violation of the 4th Amendment because "A dog sniff conducted during a concededly lawful traffic stop that reveals no information other than the location of a substance that no individual has any right to possess."
Reason Magazine's Jacob Sullum disagrees, saying that dogs can be responding to "subconscious cues from their handlers, alerting to food or residual odors of drugs that are no longer present, mistaking items associated with drugs for the drugs themselves, and so on."
He has some support from the dissenting judges in the case - Judge Souter said that "The infallible dog, however, is a creature of legal fiction.... Their supposed infallibility is belied by judicial opinions describing well-trained animals sniffing and alerting with less than perfect accuracy, whether owing to errors by their handlers, the limitations of the dogs themselves, or even the pervasive contamination of currency by cocaine." He cited evidence that "Dogs in artificial testing situations return false positives anywhere from 12.5 to 60% of the time."
Justice Ginsburg gave an ominous warning in her dissent, saying that the ruling "clears the way for suspicionless, dog-accompanied drug sweeps of parked cars along sidewalks and in parking lots."
Her fear was not unfounded. Just a year earlier, CBS highlighted the case of Lezley Whipple in Lordsburg, N.M. At her school, officials walked drug-sniffing dogs through the student parking lot. After the dogs alerted on her car, she was pulled out of class while a thorough search of her car was done.
They found nothing.
But they didn't stop there. According to Lezley, "There would be an announcement over the intercom. And they would say, ‘We're on lockdown. Nobody's to leave the building or the room.’ And the teachers would shut the door and we all had to sit in our seats. And we'd just wait there in class. Class stopped actually. And then the dog would go up and down the rows."
ACLU attorney Jane Gagne took on Lezley's case, saying "legally speaking, the Fourth Amendment of our constitution prohibits something like that, or should prohibit something like that." She added that the dog used in the school had "72 or 73 false positives within a year."
Ultimately, the school district settled out of court, agreeing to stop the searches altogether. This was good for Lezley, but bad for America because a year later, the Supreme Court would rule that those types of searches are perfectly legal, and Justice Ginsberg would warn that more actions like this were forthcoming.
And they were. Drug dogs were used in random sweeps at schools in Independence, MO and Stockton, CA, Osseo, Minnesota, and have been approved for use next year in Hawaii schools.
These dogs are not police officers. They don't know the rules, nor their Constitutional responsibilities. They are tools used for a search, and to use the kind of circular logic our courts have in stating that these searches are not actually searches is at best irresponsible, at worst, tyranny.
And when you factor in the fact that these dogs are notoriously inaccurate, you really just have cops using them - knowingly or not - simply as an excuse to harass and victimize American citizens.
______________________________
More from me on The Drug War:
Welcome to the Police State Published: June 5, 2008 Washington DC's War on Drugs has turned into an Iraq-style occupation.
Another Innocent Victim of the Drug War Published: May 13, 2008 Add another name to the list of people destroyed by our nation's unholy war on consensual commerce.
The views expressed in this
article are those of RS Davis only and do not represent
the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. RS Davis is
solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an
employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
Want to comment on this
article? Leave your comment here. Your email address is
required to track your comment. However, we will neither
publish your email address nor distribute it to other
organizations or persons. The only reason we might use
it would be if we needed to contact you regarding your
comment. All comments are subject to our
terms of use policy.
