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Sunday, April 26, 2015

an interesting observation

I wasted a good part of my morning googling dirty cop videos. There are so many out there, you could spend a good part of a MONTH doing this, but why bother? Just put "dirty cop" in the browser of your choice and watch the listing grow...
A lot of them show cops planting drugs on cars they've had alerted on by canines.
Now, "alerting" is anything from barking, smelling the ham sammich you packed for lunch, or even taking a leak on your tire. Whatever the dog does, even just wagging it's fucking tail, can be interpreted unequivocally by the officer that it "senses" drugs in the car.
Using this as an excuse to rifle through your vehicle, they then proceed to find the illegal substances the dog alerted on.
My question is, if the dog is that fucking good, why do they then REMOVE the dog to do the search themselves? Wouldn't it be easier to let the fucking highly trained and overwhelmingly more qualified dog's senses pinpoint the stash?


Things that make you go hmmmmm...

2 comments:

B said...

Actually, it is to protect the dog.

K9 officers train at my facility. Some of the dogs are REALLY good. Others not so much. I have learned a lot from watching/asking questions.

An officer can use the dog to find evidence of drugs to allow a more formal search. Sometimes it is legit. Sometimes the dog "Alerts" when the officer decides he has, just because he/she needs probable cause to do a more thorough search.

The officer does the search because:

1. There are a lot of ways the dog can get hurt. Some things that are hidden in cars might be hazardous to the dogs health if he gets a snootful.

2. The dog doesn't know what to look for, he only alerts on the stuff he has been trained to alert on. If there are other things (like large amounts of cash) the dog might not alert.

Plus the cop gets to tear your car apart with his buddies. Why miss the fun?

Xenolith said...

I can understand the points in the comment, B. However, even if there would be something to harm the dog, wouldn't it therefore be likely to harm the handler?
And as to only alerting on substances he has been trained to sniff out, THAT is what gives probable cause. If carrying large sums of cash were illegal, I'd hope to be guilty as hell! Alas...
I'm still of the opinion that if the dog says something is wrong, it would make more sense to at least have the dog narrow the search area. Only then should the cop step in.
As much as we love our mutts, it is still better a dog is harmed than a human.
And stop using our pets and working dogs as an excuse to abuse the power of authority!