Police dogs are one of the most used weapons in America’s War on Drugs. Florida alone used over 1,000 “K-9 units” to arrest 130,000 people just last year. (The insanity and abject failure of the War on Drugs is covered in my book Swagger and the excellent new film, The House I Live In, but is beyond the scope of this blog.)
Police Dogs Make Mistakes Too
Dogs are loyal, faithful, and adorable – don’t get me started on my obsession with my beloved rescues — but what if they’re not quite as reliable at drug-sniffing as we’d thought? What if their desire to please us overrides their own outstanding senses of smell? A recent University of California at Davis study found police dogs “alerting” 225 times in rooms their handlers had been told had hidden drugs. None of the rooms actually had any narcotics present. Researchers believe the dogs snapped to attention based on subtle cues from their humans. Oops.
False alerts can have significant ramifications in our criminal justice system. In many cases, a German Shepherd’s alert triggers a police search of a car, home or person, and when contraband is discovered, an arrest follows. But if the animal science is flawed, police will be required to use their own eyes, ears and noses, and fewer drug arrests will result.
The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear two Florida cases this week on the issue of whether a police dog’s alert is a constitutionally permissible replacement for a search warrant. Lawyers earnestly argued whether police pups Franky and Aldo should be permitted to sniff around outside homes in drug-infested areas. “Dogs make mistakes. Dogs err,” lawyer Glen Gifford argued before the justices. “Dogs get excited and will alert to things like tennis balls in trunks or animals, that sort of thing.” Any dog owner knows that to be true. (Or anyone who’s seen the movie “Up,” where the dogs lose their minds, yelling “squirrel!” when one scampers by.)
Stay tuned for the Supreme Court’s decision on this one.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not necessarily those of Avvo.com.
2 comments
Ashley
It's not only the dogs making mistakes or reacting to unintentional cues from their handlers in these cases. Police are outright manipulating the dogs to respond exactly how they want so they can search. They also do not disclose what the dog's signal is prior to the search. They can basically say the dog's found something any time they want.
Ashley
A cop took my purse and started teasing the dog with it. When you do that "here boy, get it, get it" thing with ANY dog, he is going to react. So of course the dog started playing and based on that reaction my purse was then legally subject to search. Nice trick, huh?