K-9 Drug Searches

Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-court-dogs-20121031,0,7179164.story

It is no secret that dogs have a pristine sense of smell; perhaps that is why dogs are used for drug sniffing searches. Just the state of Florida alone has over a 1,000 canine units, and due to these units the police departments have been able to make over 130,000 arrests this last year. Although, through the success, there have been many cases were the dogs have been wrong or have wrongly detected.

On Wednesday, two cases originating from Florida will be judged by the United States Supreme Court on whether a canine’s alert will be enough reasonable evidence for a search warrant. American citizens are protected by the fourth amendment which places a ban on any unreasonable searches so evidence is important. Some people say that “there needs to be caution against using canines in place of search warrants.” One person even went as far as to suggest that “A dog and his handler must be tested on multiple vehicles, and they need to be correct nine out of 10 times.

Over two days a study was done by researches from UC Davis that experimented with the dogs and their ability to detect drugs. The experiment started off by informing 18 “dog handlers” about miniature samples of illegal drugs marked with a red piece of construction paper that were placed in four rooms of the church building. Through the testing the drug-sniffing dogs warned their police handlers multiple times, 255 times over all to be exact, for every room in the building. Examiners detected that the dogs were twice more likely to warn the police officers when there was a spot marked with a piece of red construction paper when in fact there were no drugs in any of the rooms. The data suggests that the dogs are triggered by the suspicion of the “handler’s beliefs” showing that the dogs in some cases are not completely reliable. In the previous year the Chicago Tribune found that out of all the drug searches conducted on peoples cars, only 44 percent of them were successful. The study emphasizes the need to rely on other evidence in order to conduct a search, but the decision will be up to the United States Supreme Court.