DEA hit 5 grow operations in Denver yesterday

[Ronin13]

Police dogs only have success rate of about 20% in detecting anything anyway. Their success rate is extremely exagerated much like polygraph tests and in many locations not admisable in court. Most hits by police dogs are planted hits where the dog knows it is supposed to alert based on a cue by the handler.

sent from a soup can and some string..

I'm not 100% sure on that, but it would seem that kind of accusation is an attack on K-9 Officers' integrity and professionalism... which I would see more as rare- the vast majority of police are honest and have the integrity to not make up evidence. I wouldn't go nearly as far as to say "most" alerts by drug-sniffing K9s are planted based on cues by the handler. That's like saying "most vehicle searches are preformed on false pretenses by dishonest cops" which is simply not true. As far as evidence obtained by drug dogs- the SCOTUS ruled it's admissible in court- Florida V. Harris where "Justice Elena Kagan stated that the dog's certification and continued training are adequate indication of his reliability, and thus is sufficient to presume the dog's alert provides probable cause to search, using the "totality-of-the-circumstances" test per Illinois v. Gates." A decision made Feb 19, 2013.

[lowbeyond]

I'm not 100% sure on that, but it would seem that kind of accusation is an attack on K-9 Officers' integrity and professionalism... which I would see more as rare- the vast majority of police are honest and have the integrity to not make up evidence. I wouldn't go nearly as far as to say "most" alerts by drug-sniffing K9s are planted based on cues by the handler. That's like saying "most vehicle searches are preformed on false pretenses by dishonest cops" which is simply not true. As far as evidence obtained by drug dogs- the SCOTUS ruled it's admissible in court- Florida V. Harris where "Justice Elena Kagan stated that the dog's certification and continued training are adequate indication of his reliability, and thus is sufficient to presume the dog's alert provides probable cause to search, using the "totality-of-the-circumstances" test per Illinois v. Gates." A decision made Feb 19, 2013.

Well you could say that. But you are wrong.

Also Harris was bullshit. Basically the logics is.. The State certify a dog. That is all that is needed. In practive the dog cold have a 25% or less success rate, but so what, the certificate matters - thats it. Thus the State has satisfied the burden itself by giving itself a piece of paper. Sure ! uh-huh

Cliff notes for the below..

A dog performs flawless in re-ecertification, but in the real world has a 25% success rate. Great Dog according to SCOTUS, hey he has that State Approved Certificate. w00t w00t !

2007-2009 Study of suberban polices deapartments. Overall Success rate 44%. That's not even a coin flip. Oh and when the people were Hispanic? 27% success rate. Well now that is interesting.

Double Blind Study in a Church. Sausages placed to distract the dogs. Red papers placed around the room, cops told they were places of intrest. But in reality no dugs/bombs whatever found. Overall 21/144, a 14.5 % sucess rate. Go doggies!

Not the handler? Oh please. Its bullshit.

If drug dogs where acutal drugs, they would never get approved, as they are not even as good as a placebo.

If the State wishes to enforce law X, can they at least stop the lying and use something to further that goal with actual value? I guess Not. Just give everyone a blue showing up ribbon, and all is good.

SCOTUS is apparently full of 3rd grade soccer players


http://reason.com/blog/2012/07/02/po...s-by-own-rules

Police Dog Named "Bono" Plays By Own Rules, Plants Drug Evidence at Virtually Every Crime Scene

Nick Gillespie|Jul. 2, 2012 10:14 am
The Virginia State Police has at least one very dirty cop: a K-9 pooch named "Bono" that has an uncanny ability to detect illegal drugs. Especially when there aren't any present.

The four-legged crime fighter working for the Virginia State Police has been on a hot streak, detecting drugs nearly every time he’s on the job. In reality, however, illegal narcotics were found just 22 times of the 85 ‘alerts’ by the dog.

That was the argument public defender Randy Cargill representing Herbert Green, 45, tried to use to suppress the 1.5 kilogram of cocaine found in his client’s SUV with Bono’s help, the Roanoke Times reported....

Cargill argued that Bono’s track record was so poor that police lacked probable cause to search Green’s SUV in the first place.

Oh, Cargill, you poor bastard. You probably thought that expert testimony had to be, you know, expert or something. What happened next:

Bono ‘may not be a model of canine accuracy,’ [federal Judge Glen] Conrad wrote in an opinion filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Roanoke.

However, the judge ruled that other factors, including the dog's training and flawless performance during re-certification sessions, were enough to overcome a challenge raised by Green's attorney.

And there's this:

[A prosecutor] explained that in some cases where nothing was found after an alert by Bono, police later determined that cocaine or marijuana had been in the vehicle hours earlier, leaving a scent the dog was trained to detect.

Bono’s handler Trooper Brian Dillon testified that variables such as wind and the possibility of well-stashed drugs in a car would affect the numbers cited by the defense.

‘It's just a big game of hide-and-seek with the canine,’ Dillon said.

Read more.
Don't you see? It's just a game. A big freaking game.
Back in 2011, Radley Balko (then at Reason, now at Huffington Post) wrote about the incredibly shakey record that police dogs have in turning up drugs. Or, more precisely, how independent and rigorous studies show that - duh - police dogs follow cues from their oh-so-human handlers and, as a result, generate an enormous amount of false positives, especially when dealing with black and hispanic suspects.


Read this:

A recent Chicago Tribune survey of traffic stops by suburban police departments from 2007 to 2009, for example, found that searches turned up contraband in just 44 percent of the cases where police dogs alerted to the presence of narcotics. (An alert is a signal, such as barking or sitting, that dogs are trained to display when they detect the target scent.) In stops involving Hispanic drivers, the dogs' success rate was just 27 percent. The two largest departments the Tribune surveyed—the Chicago Police Department and the Illinois State Police—said they don't even keep track of such information.

Summarizing a study done by University of California-Davis researchers, Balko noted:

Dog/handler teams correctly completed a search with no alerts in just 21 of the 144 walk-throughs. The other 123 searches produced an astounding 225 alerts, every one of them false. Even more interesting, the search points designed to trick the handlers (marked by the red slips of paper) were about twice as likely to trigger false alerts as the search points designed to trick the dogs (by luring them with sausages)....

And more:

In 2006 University of North Carolina law professor Richard Myers conducted a statistical analysis(PDF) of police dog accuracy tests and concluded that the animals were not reliable enough to produce probable cause for a search, let alone serve as the cornerstone of a conviction. At least five states have banned or restricted the use of scent lineups in criminal cases, but they are still frequently used in courtrooms across the country.

Man's best friend? Hardly. The MAN's best friend? Definitely.

And here is the write up of probably the most definitive study on drug dogs conducted.

Cliff Notes: Its a game. The handlers aka cops give cue to the dogs to make them alert. No one cold see that coming - except everyone.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babba...imal_behaviour

Clever hounds
Feb 15th 2011, 9:05 by M.K.

IN THE early 20th century, a horse named Clever Hans was believed capable of counting and other impressive mental tasks. After years of great performance, psychologists put the ruse to rest by demonstrating that though Hans was certainly clever, he was not clever in the way that everyone expected. The horse was cunningly picking up on tiny, unintentional bodily and facial cues given out not only by his trainer, but also by the audience. Aware of the “Clever Hans” effect, Lisa Lit at the University of California, Davis, and her colleagues, wondered whether the beliefs of professional dog handlers might similarly affect the outcomes of searches for drugs and explosives. Remarkably, Dr Lit found, they do.
Dr Lit asked 18 professional dog handlers and their mutts to complete two sets of four brief searches. Thirteen of those who participated worked in drug detection, three in explosives detection, and two worked in both. The dogs had been trained to use one of two signals to indicate to their handlers that they had detected something. Some would bark, others would sit.

The experimental searches took places in the rooms of a church, and each team of dog and human had five minutes allocated to each of the eight searches. Before the searches, the handlers were informed that some of the search areas might contain up to three target scents, and also that in two cases those scents would be marked by pieces of red paper.

What the handlers were not told was that two of the targets contained decoy scents, in the form of unwrapped, hidden sausages, to encourage the dogs' interest in a false location. Moreover, none of the search areas contained the scents of either drugs or explosives. Any “detections” made by the teams thus had to be false. Recorders, who were blind to the study, noted where handlers indicated that their dogs had raised alerts.

The findings, which Dr Lit reports in Animal Cognition, reveal that of 144 searches, only 21 were clean (no alerts). All the others raised one alert or more. In total, the teams raised 225 alerts, all of them false. While the sheer number of false alerts struck Dr Lit as fascinating, it was where they took place that was of greatest interest.

When handlers could see a red piece of paper, allegedly marking a location of interest, they were much more likely to say that their dogs signalled an alert. Indeed, in the two rooms where red paper was present and sausages were not, 32 of a possible 36 alerts were raised. In the two where both red paper and sausages were present that figure was 30–not significantly different. In contrast, in search areas where a sausage was hidden but no red piece of paper was there for handlers to see, it was only 17.

The dogs, in other words, were distracted only about half the time by the stimulus aimed at them. The human handlers were not only distracted on almost every occasion by the stimulus aimed at them, but also transmitted that distraction to their animals–who responded accordingly. To mix metaphors, the dogs were crying “wolf” at the unconscious behest of their handlers.

How much that matters in the real world is unclear. But it might. If a handler, for example, unconsciously “profiled” people being sniffed by a drug- or explosive-detecting dog at an airport, false positives could abound. That is not only bad for innocent travellers, but might distract the team from catching the guilty. Handlers' expectations may be stopping sniffer dogs doing their jobs properly.

[PugnacAutMortem]

I'm not 100% sure on that, but it would seem that kind of accusation is an attack on K-9 Officers' integrity and professionalism... which I would see more as rare- the vast majority of police are honest and have the integrity to not make up evidence. I wouldn't go nearly as far as to say "most" alerts by drug-sniffing K9s are planted based on cues by the handler. That's like saying "most vehicle searches are preformed on false pretenses by dishonest cops" which is simply not true. As far as evidence obtained by drug dogs- the SCOTUS ruled it's admissible in court- Florida V. Harris where "Justice Elena Kagan stated that the dog's certification and continued training are adequate indication of his reliability, and thus is sufficient to presume the dog's alert provides probable cause to search, using the "totality-of-the-circumstances" test per Illinois v. Gates." A decision made Feb 19, 2013.

I will say this Ronin, I have a personal belief that someone whose livelihood depends on a certain industry, whatever that industry is, really shouldn't be an outspoken supporter of a controversial topic that has to do with that industry. For example, I work in the oil and gas industry. My livelihood is made because people come by my products, and then use them for fracking 99/100. I really try and stay away from talking to people about fracking, because I feel like even though I have more knowledge than the average person on the subject, I'm getting paid enough to support my family because of fracking. Where does my knowledge of fracking come from? The industry professionals who I speak with on a daily basis. What is their livelihood as well?

If you are pulling a paycheck from some company/org that has some controversial element to it, it just comes across being a lobbyist if you are outspoken about it. Now does that mean that the industry knowledge that I have about fracking or the industry knowledge you have about law enforcement is incorrect? Not at all, but if you are in the industry I just dont think that you can be the voice or reason to soothe some people's worries or concerns.

Again, my own personal opinion, but in discussions like this I have found it to my advantage to sit on the sidelines until the end (or until someone asks for your opinion).

[hatidua]

I will say this Ronin, I have a personal belief that someone whose livelihood depends on a certain industry, whatever that industry is, really shouldn't be an outspoken supporter of a controversial topic that has to do with that industry. For example, I work in the oil and gas industry. My livelihood is made because people come by my products, and then use them for fracking 99/100. I really try and stay away from talking to people about fracking, because I feel like even though I have more knowledge than the average person on the subject, I'm getting paid enough to support my family because of fracking. Where does my knowledge of fracking come from? The industry professionals who I speak with on a daily basis. What is their livelihood as well?

If you are pulling a paycheck from some company/org that has some controversial element to it, it just comes across being a lobbyist if you are outspoken about it. Now does that mean that the industry knowledge that I have about fracking or the industry knowledge you have about law enforcement is incorrect? Not at all, but if you are in the industry I just dont think that you can be the voice or reason to soothe some people's worries or concerns.

Again, my own personal opinion, but in discussions like this I have found it to my advantage to sit on the sidelines until the end (or until someone asks for your opinion).

Alas, that demonstrates a thought process and level of maturity not possessed by all.

[stoner01]

Police dogs only have success rate of about 20% in detecting anything anyway. Their success rate is extremely exagerated much like polygraph tests and in many locations not admisable in court. Most hits by police dogs are planted hits where the dog knows it is supposed to alert based on a cue by the handler.

sent from a soup can and some string..

I'm gonna have to throw the BS card down on this. And Ronin is right on with his post.

* Disclaimer: My experience as a narc do handler is strictly .Mil so I have only a little experience with civilians.

[lowbeyond]

I'm gonna have to throw the BS card down on this. And Ronin is right on with his post.

* Disclaimer: My experience as a narc do handler is strictly .Mil so I have only a little experience with civilians.

Yea you are right it is BS. Its not 20%, its 14.5%

[stoner01]

Yea you are right it is BS. Its not 20%, its 14.5%

I love to see a reliable data source for that.

[lowbeyond]

law is the law !

now go drink out of the other fountain.

ETA: I suppose at least some of you are against things like the MT firearms freedom act as well.

[twitchyfinger]

Just said on the news the raid was on Columbian cartels that have moved here to get a stake in the "legal" side of the business and funnel the money back to Columbia.

[Dave_L]

Just said on the news the raid was on Columbian cartels that have moved here to get a stake in the "legal" side of the business and funnel the money back to Columbia.

This is my shocked face.....wait for it....any moment...