

Drug-Sniffing Dogs Reflect Police Bias - gnosis
http://www.erowid.org/freedom/police/police_article1.shtml

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pittsburgh
This reminds me of the story from about ten years ago about a racist police
dog in Pittsburgh that would attack bystanders:
[http://www.oocities.org/ericsquire/articles/dogs/wtae030425....](http://www.oocities.org/ericsquire/articles/dogs/wtae030425.htm)
and
[http://web.archive.org/web/20080503212841/http://dir.salon.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20080503212841/http://dir.salon.com/story/mwt/wire/2004/02/03/dog/index.html)

Tangent: I'm extremely frustrated at how ephemeral web pages are. I googled
the story to provide a reference, and the most reputable sources for the story
are dead. I found 404s on Salon.com, Fox News, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review,
and PBS.org. Sadly, I found some of these links on a racist forum. It sucks
that Storm Front keeps bytes around longer than these other sites.

Anyway, I just donated $25 to archive.org to support what they're doing. I've
been using the Wayback Machine for years and always took it for granted. I'm
not sure what made things different about tonight's frustration at broken
links, but for the first time I just became worried about the preservation of
history.

~~~
tjarratt
I'm a little surprised that there wasn't a valid google cache still kicking
around for any of those dead links.

~~~
borism
Google is for-profit organization. They're not interested in keeping stuff
unless it makes them money.

~~~
quizbiz
Making money is not the only goal of a for profit organization. Being public
certainly doesn't help but if "don't be evil" is still ingrained in Google's
culture, I would expect them to support archive.org's effort.

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strathmeyer
Huh? Dogs are brought so that the police can then do the search themselves.
The police signal the dog to bark, and because of the barking justify their
search. Not sure what the news here is.

~~~
gojomo
Your cynicism has accurately predicted the gist of this article, but it may be
news for others who see dogs as objective sensors.

~~~
shadowfiend
Including, specifically and problematically, the law.

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pessimizer
This is video of stoned ex-drug cop Barry Cooper explaining how police can
make their dogs false alert:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J41K2XHpNnE>

And this is video of a cop doing it:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hkw8KgZ_LhU>

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sonnym
Barry Cooper, a former narcotics officer, explains in pretty great detail how
they train with alert dogs:

<http://youtu.be/F9pGylTSDj0>

A lot of the video isn't particularly relevant, but he does discuss how the
officers are trained to incite the dog to alert and how the desire for the
ball is a prey drive.

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Joakal
In NSW, police with dogs are greatly disliked:
<http://www.nswccl.org.au/issues/sniffer_dogs.php>

tl;dr: Dogs weren't effective, people were harassed, records say ineffective,
ombudsman called on government to withdraw the abusive powers.

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jws
I wonder if repeated handler bias leads to a prejudiced dog. Then the animal
would no longer need cues from the handler to perpetuate to unequal protection
under the law.

I'm regularly embarrassed by my own little dog who for 10 years has been an
incorrigible racist. She came as a puppy from the breeder with a deep seated
hatred of black men, men in hats, and anyone on a bicycle which we have been
unable to train out or even suppress. We just pretend she barks at everyone.

~~~
vidarh
It's incredibly deep seated. We had a dog that we got through an animal
shelter, and we knew that it hadn't been treated well by its former owner, but
didn't really notice much for the best part of a year.

Then winter came, and one day I took him out while I was removing snow from
the driveway. The instant I put on gloves he totally changed. He started
circling me at high speed (he was built to run _fast_ ) and would snarl and
try to bite my hands. Took the gloves off, and he'd instantly turn back into
the most loveable dog ever. Back on, and the process was repeated.

This being in Norway, getting aggressive towards people with gloves on during
winter was a bit of an issue, but at least once we knew we could keep a extra
solid grip on the leash while walking him at winter. Thankfully he'd need to
be quite close to someone before it was an issue.

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parfe
I won't trust my dog alone with my slippers, but the government and enough of
the populace trust dogs to the point they gave dogs the power to revoke our
civil rights.

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rdtsc
No they gave the police that power by letting them use dogs. I think at some
point it was understood that the subjectivity of a dog's signaling
interpretation can be used as a backdoor for searches. It is a clever trick
and it works.

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ams6110
Cited research: <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3078300/>

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stretchwithme
There are false positives when using eyes to discover things as well. So the
fact that dogs are biased and make mistakes doesn't concern me. Law
enforcement is not a perfect weapon.

I'm more concerned that that weapon is pointed at your civil liberties. What
you put into your body or do with consenting adults is of no proper concern of
government.

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shadowfiend
Assuming this is corroborated by more studies, I wonder how long this would
take to result in a change in the acceptance of dog sniffs as probable cause.
Does anyone know of any precedent or previous situation where such a change
happened?

~~~
epochwolf
It would require a court to change the precedence since probable is determined
by the courts. It could happen fairly quickly if the right case was argued in
the right court. Best case would still take years. I personally think it will
take decades. Courts don't move quickly without pressure to change and police
don't like to give up the powers they have.

~~~
shadowfiend
Yes, presumably. I guess I'm wondering what level of evidence/studies courts
typically want in these situations before overturning precedent. Obviously it
varies from court to court, though :)

~~~
epochwolf
Not sure. I would imagine one good expert witness with a good lawyer and a few
studies could make headway if there was sufficient public pressure. Court
cases don't happen in a vacuum. :)

~~~
sunchild
Right. If one expert can make a compelling case to a jury, that jury will set
a precedent for future defense lawyers. In fact, I'd be surprised if it isn't
already the case in some jurisdictions.

~~~
westicle
Juries don't set precedents.

The precedent affects the directions given to the jury by the judge, and can
generally only be changed by an appellate court ("the direction given by the
judge in x case was incorrect and therefore the conviction should be
overturned/the case retried").

Regardless of the direction given, juries are generally entitled to return
whatever verdict they want (see jury nullification). If a judge (correctly)
directs them that a sniffer dog alert constitutes cause for a search they may
still acquit.

~~~
sunchild
I think you're confusing legal "precedent" with the colloquial meaning of the
word.

Isn't it obvious that I meant "precedent" in the sense of "a jury found this
expert's testimony to be credible once, and therefore is likely to do so
again"?

Seems like the "for future defense lawyers" should have been enough of a clue
to head off the pedantic hair-splitting.

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JoachimSchipper
[EDIT: this isn't getting the (positive) karma I expected it to. Anyone has a
hint?]

This article isn't nearly as convincing as the author hopes. (S)he mainly
argues that drug dogs catch too many innocents to allow them to be used as
"probable cause" for searches. However,

"The [extensive] review [of the Austrialian New South Wales Ombudsman] found
that illegal drugs were found in only 26% of all searches that were initiated
after a handler indicated that a dog alerted on the subject."

If there were a cheap-ish test that detected bombs with this accuracy,
wouldn't we want to use it? Even if a few innocents would be unjustly
searched?

I also agree with the author that we should look more closely at
methodological issues of drug dogs; but this article is only convincing if you
support the underlying premise that drugs aren't (all that) bad. (I do.)

(The article speculates that police dogs could be trained by their handlers to
alert e.g. on blacks, but doesn't show that this actually happens, or that
police dogs are more racist than police officers. The article also argues that
dog-based evidence is not very strong, but only cites a case where it was
thrown out; and "probable cause" is far weaker than "sufficient evidence to
convict" anyway.)

~~~
darklajid
Let's look at the quote you present:

"26% of all searches found drugs"

I think everything afterwards goes downhill:

\- 'cheapish test to detect _BOMBS_'

How did we end up with bombs now? A second ago we were talking about
(recreational?) drugs. Are you pulling the 'War on Terror' card here?

\- '_cheapish_'

Backed up by what? What are the costs of training and keeping (feeding,
medical treatment, housing) the dogs? Bringing the officers to search in the
first place? What are the costs of the individuals being searched, who
probably had to stop right there for quite a while and to sit back and wait.

\- 'a _few_ innocents would be unjustly searched'

74 out of 100. 740 out of 1000. 7400 out of 10000. If 3/4 are 'few', where's
'half' and 'most' located on that scale?

~~~
JoachimSchipper
Thanks for the explanation. Don't get me wrong, I think the War on Terror is
even worse than the War on Drugs. I'll try to be clearer next time.

"Bombs" is intended to mean "something that we can all agree is really bad". I
intended to say "the costs seem acceptable if they stop something really bad"
(exaggerating for effect, "nobody who's not already in favour of legalisation
is going to buy this argument"). Remember that many think that drugs are
_really bad_.

(Some of the data you requested, although I don't think it helps much:
<http://people.howstuffworks.com/police-dog2.htm> suggests that a police dog
costs $8500 to acquire. Housing a dog in a shelter costs ~$3000 over the dog's
lifetime, IIRC; so $15000 seems a reasonable guess at a dog's lifetime cost. I
didn't find the number of active dogs or the cost of officer training, which
would be required to calculate cost/successful search.

From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs>: "In 2008, 1.5 million
Americans were arrested for drug offenses. 500,000 were imprisoned." Even if
we assume that this corresponds to 1.5 million successful searches after a dog
alerted, you'd get 6 million searches per year, or about one search every
fifty years per American. Of course, that assumes those searches will be
randomly distributed; but still, if I felt that drugs were _really bad_ and
could be stopped by repression, I'd consider that a reasonable price to pay.)

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davidw
Please help keep this site about hacking and startups and articles that are
actually intellectually interesting, rather than some sort of
advocacy/"internet getting its dander up" by flagging articles like these.
Thanks!

