Drug Dogs on Alert on Officers?
June 2, 2020 1:08 PM Subscribe
This NYTimes story tells of how a NC driver saw an officer plant drugs in his car before arresting him for drug possession - https://www.nytimes.com/ 2015/10/25/ us/racial-disparity -traffic-stops- driving-black.html. Assuming that there have been officers that have planted drugs on people, in homes or vehicles to justify an arrest, I wonder about drug dog protocols.
For example, are dogs trained to not alert on officers who may have handled drugs or, in fact, may have drugs on their person rather than in evidence bags? And at sites where drug sweeps are being done with dogs, is it a family affair, where handlers keep dogs away from corrupt officers?
For example, are dogs trained to not alert on officers who may have handled drugs or, in fact, may have drugs on their person rather than in evidence bags? And at sites where drug sweeps are being done with dogs, is it a family affair, where handlers keep dogs away from corrupt officers?
Anecdotal but:
I once heard a story from an attorney (ex-prosecutor IIRC) who got in a pissing match with a cop, cop wanted to search his car, he refused, cop accused him of drugs and called for a K-9 unit. He actually knew the new cop who was the handler.
The relevant part of the story is as the attorney tells it, dog responses are not really exact science and handlers can trigger their dogs to signal a "suspicious" scent regardless, and will do that to back up the other cops on the scene. Whole point of the story was how the attorney won the pissing match and watching the initial cop get angrier and angrier, because his buddy with the dog would not play ball and trigger a fake response
So yeah, I'm sure in practice the converse is true and handlers just keep the dog from overtly signalling people they don't want involved. (Which would actually be a feature if cops were honest as you do *not* want dogs searching everyone nearby by default, without suspicion.)
posted by mark k at 1:37 PM on June 2, 2020 [3 favorites]
I once heard a story from an attorney (ex-prosecutor IIRC) who got in a pissing match with a cop, cop wanted to search his car, he refused, cop accused him of drugs and called for a K-9 unit. He actually knew the new cop who was the handler.
The relevant part of the story is as the attorney tells it, dog responses are not really exact science and handlers can trigger their dogs to signal a "suspicious" scent regardless, and will do that to back up the other cops on the scene. Whole point of the story was how the attorney won the pissing match and watching the initial cop get angrier and angrier, because his buddy with the dog would not play ball and trigger a fake response
So yeah, I'm sure in practice the converse is true and handlers just keep the dog from overtly signalling people they don't want involved. (Which would actually be a feature if cops were honest as you do *not* want dogs searching everyone nearby by default, without suspicion.)
posted by mark k at 1:37 PM on June 2, 2020 [3 favorites]
Even assuming drug dog handlers were on the up and up (which they aren't, whether consciously, unconsciously, or both), scent dogs are trained to discriminate both in scents and in search areas.
One way to start dog scent training is to train them to find items that the handler has recently touched. Obviously the handler themselves is going to have the strongest smell but part of the training is teaching them to focus on the search area, however that is defined. So if a dog is brought to a traffic stop, the dog is (hopefully) trained specifically to search cars and the handler indicates that THIS car is the car to smell, not any of the other cars (which, after all, may have drugs in them).
posted by muddgirl at 5:14 PM on June 2, 2020
One way to start dog scent training is to train them to find items that the handler has recently touched. Obviously the handler themselves is going to have the strongest smell but part of the training is teaching them to focus on the search area, however that is defined. So if a dog is brought to a traffic stop, the dog is (hopefully) trained specifically to search cars and the handler indicates that THIS car is the car to smell, not any of the other cars (which, after all, may have drugs in them).
posted by muddgirl at 5:14 PM on June 2, 2020
Also here's an article on the Clever Hans effect and how that relates to drug dogs.
posted by muddgirl at 5:17 PM on June 2, 2020
posted by muddgirl at 5:17 PM on June 2, 2020
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posted by BungaDunga at 1:31 PM on June 2, 2020 [11 favorites]