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Thr0waway3691215 t1_jdyrfij wrote

Reply to comment by Xaxxon in N.Y. to pay $5.5 million to man exonerated in writer Alice Sebold rape case by OutsideObserver2

Drug dogs have repeatedly been shown to be useless, it's pretty public knowledge that the handler is why they alert. We still use them anyway, I don't get it.

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goldfinger1906 t1_jdyx5f8 wrote

It’s used more, now anyway, as a means of eliciting either a confession or non-verbal cues directing the officer to a location where something may be hiding. It’s intended to dramatically increase one’s fear and stress levels, especially in a roadside stop. Usually preceded by statements like,”Look if you just tell me where it is I can help you, but if the dog finds it first then it’s out of my hands.”

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boringhistoryfan t1_jdz5ujw wrote

It's used to manufacture probable cause as I understand it. The officer needs to show that to justify searching a vehicle absent permission. So the dog is summoned and made to alert, and that allows them to override the owners denial of permission to search their vehicle.

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cheap_walmart_art t1_jdzljqp wrote

Back in the day when i was 18 I got pulled over dead to rights leaving my dealers house. Needless to say I had definitely re-upped and was carrying. Enter stonecold Steve Austin sheriff who pulls me over. We do the song and dance and he feeds me this line about it being a routine traffic stop. I refuse a search. He brings the dog and gives me the whole spiel. However, the dog will not alert for some reason. He’s just happy and frolicking. Cop keeps yanking the poor thing over and it just won’t do whatever it is he wants it to do to my car. He just slings the dog forcibly back into the cruiser and tells me to leave and if he even sees me again on this side of town he will “arrest me on sight” no idea what luck was with me that day but I feel bad for the poor dog. Dude was PISSED at it.

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Mythosaurus t1_je2wz80 wrote

So it’s the modern equivalent of animal divination!

Might as well use Roman sacred chickens to convince the judge…

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Mend1cant t1_je34ig9 wrote

“99 problems but a bitch ain’t one”. Not about women.

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al_pacappuchino t1_jdz2fh9 wrote

Speaking of drug dogs. I once flew with a few coworkers to a bother country. The flight went with out a hitch, and get our luggage and walk past a uniformed officer and his dog on our way. Once we get out to the street waiting for a cab my coworker pulls out his cigarette package from his pocket and pulls out a fat joint. Sparks it up and inhales. I asked him how the hell he had the stones to just walk past security with that one in his pocket and asked aren’t you afraid of the dogs? He he goes: yeah, no! Those are just for show dude! I was flabbergasted.

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MaidenPilled t1_je10evr wrote

Dogs may not have been trained for marijuana. If you're looking for coke or heroin mules you don't want your dog to alert every time a college student walks by. Dog may not have been trained for drugs at all. At airports I'm pretty sure a lot of the dogs are for explosives, not drugs.

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somme_rando t1_je1b3ut wrote

Sometimes none of the above -

https://www.mpi.govt.nz/news/media-releases/mpi-introduces-new-biosecurity-sniffers/
>The detector dogs on show at the Auckland Biosecurity Centre today included media celebrity Clara, a recently graduated border biosecurity dog, and Boston, a springer spaniel that MPI is training to work in the field to detect any pest that makes it across the border.

>“We are working to develop a new type of dog that will be able to help with biosecurity responses. It will have the flexibility to be trained to detect any new pest that makes it to New Zealand.”

>Steve Gilbert, MPI Director Border Clearance Services says traditional border biosecurity dogs are not suitable to act in the incursion role, as they are trained to sniff out food and could be distracted by food odours when working outside.

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hummingbird_mywill t1_jdz362t wrote

What country though? Marijuana isn’t illegal in a bunch of countries and the dogs aren’t trained on it.

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Blazerer t1_jdzzot7 wrote

You do realise that, in your story, he must have already had the drugs on him when he boarded? In the US? And he had drugs in his pocket?

Besides the fact that whatever your target destination might have been might not have laws against marijuana, the story does not make any kind of sense when accounting for someone who supposedly smuggled marijuana in his pocket through US customs...when flying.

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al_pacappuchino t1_je07uhf wrote

US? No dude. My coworker had the thing on him the hole way from start to finish. It was a flight from Stockholm to Paris. Don’t be so americentric.

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arbivark t1_je0xd0u wrote

I once accidentally smuggled weed into Paris. Had a roach in my wallet.

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EdgeOfWetness t1_je13fc3 wrote

You're writing in English. How was he supposed to know your itinerary?

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al_pacappuchino t1_je16twq wrote

So English defaults to the us, even if the majority of people on here from all over use it to communicate? Men du kanske föredrar att jag skriver på svenska för att visa var jag kommer ifrån. Problemet med det är sångröster inte så många.

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EdgeOfWetness t1_je1g374 wrote

> So English defaults to the us, even if the majority of people on here from all over use it to communicate?

In the absence of any other information about location, is it that outrageous a guess?

I don't think poster was being americentric, but patiently just saying "No, actually I was speaking of a flight between Stockholm and Paris" would have been kindly informative and helpful, without the "stupid Americans, think everything is about you" comment.

But as always you're free to be as triggered as you wish here.

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hershdiggity t1_je1r2l8 wrote

It's not an outrageous guess. However, it wasn't a guess, it was an assumption. And that's a pretty outrageous assumption.

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ExistingPosition5742 t1_je23lk4 wrote

I've taken a small amount of cocaine on a US flight twice. Only cause I didn't realize I had it, but yeah went through no problem.

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TopCheesecakeGirl t1_jdz5la0 wrote

Hahaha joke’s on them; I always travel with beef jerky.

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nautilator44 t1_je0a392 wrote

Oh no! Did I just drop a delicious beef jerky treat on the ground? Oh bother, I can never hold onto those things! Anyway, good boy, here's 5 more.

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tadcoffin t1_je03al1 wrote

Dogs are capable of being drug dogs. It's just not how they are typically used. Not that dogs should be used in the manufactured War on Drugs anyway.

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Ksh_667 t1_je153qa wrote

Exactly. Dogs should just be having fun. I don’t know anyone who has as much fun as a dog. We ought to encourage that. Nothing better than seeing an ecstatic doggo living their best life.

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pipocaQuemada t1_je0as65 wrote

Dogs have a very accurate sense of smell; they can reliably sniff out various things.

There's a number of scentwork dog sports. For example, AKC scentwork titles use birch, anise, clove, and cypress oils. There's also e.g. barnhunt, where dogs have to identify which pvc tubes contain pet rats and which are empty or only have rat bedding.

The problem is that departments don't train dogs and handlers well, because they don't actually want effective detection dogs, they want probable cause generators.

It's fairly well known that dogs can read cues from their handlers and alert when the handler thinks there's something there. But that can be fixed by more adversarial training and testing where handlers are misled on the number of items they need to find, and if they can't control their own body language and cause a false alert they fail.

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QuintoBlanco t1_je4unl4 wrote

The real problem is that there is no objective way to determine whether or not a dog has smelled a particular thing, has missed a smell, or has recognized a smell, outside of a controlled experiment.

This means that the problem cannot be fixed because there is no way to verify if the handler has done a good job outside of controlled experiments, which means that the handlers can just make stuff up.

In the Netherlands hundreds of dog tests have been falsified because the police wanted a result, not because the handlers made mistakes.

The investigating officers would tell the officers who handled the dogs which result they wanted.

Of course outside of law enforcement, this is far less of an issue.

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89141 t1_je5oki3 wrote

Did you make all that up just now?

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QuintoBlanco t1_je6t0v7 wrote

No. Unfortunately I made nothing of that up.

Why do you think I made that up?

I genuinely am very interested to know why you think I would make something like that up, this is not a rhetorical question.

Here is a link and a a translation of part of the article:

https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/politie-sjoemelde-met-geurproeven-verdacht-vaak-wees-de-hond-de-dader-aan~bb7b11f2/

"From an old research report, it now appears that the smell test has been manipulated for decades in order to get the suspect convicted. At the time, the Public Prosecution Service did not see this, or did not want to see it. Nevertheless, a scent dog had identified a suspect as the perpetrator several times, although it was later proven that he could not have committed the crime."

"The police officers who admitted in 2006 to the court in Leeuwarden that they never conducted a blind scent test consistently wrote in all official reports that they had done so."

"We already knew long before 1997 that police dog handler Kobus S. could guarantee a positive result," says former detective Jan Paalman. "Kobus could turn a weak case into a strong one."

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89141 t1_je6w9z0 wrote

That’s their opinion. There’s more that disagree.

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QuintoBlanco t1_je6ytmn wrote

No, that is not 'their' opinion.

Four police officers were convicted in a court of law and six others were fired.

Dutch prosecutors no longer use odor tests by dogs as evidence because of this case.

Several convictions based on odor tests were overturned.

So I have to ask you again, why is this so hard for you to believe?

Do you watch a lot of procedural dramas?

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DistortoiseLP t1_je0khy0 wrote

>We still use them anyway, I don't get it.

It's essentially ritual behaviour and endures the same way. People believe it like they believe any other magic, and institutions exploit it for public approval like any other magic.

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arbivark t1_je0wqb8 wrote

I used to have a senior partner at my law firm. Cops show up with a drug dog at the door of his condo. It alerts. They bust in the door and seize pot plants. He hires a fancy law firm. They fly in the dog's trainer from california, and impeach the dog. Evidence suppressed, case dismissed.

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