An incident in Mississippi provides a window into a dystopian future where USPS workers and local cops can block people from accessing reproductive care.
Those dogs all operate on signaling from the handling officer.
If there is a long pattern of dogs are signaling “drugs” (irrespective of why they’re signaling) when there are no drugs found, that sounds like a great angle defense attorneys can use to get any evidence found thrown out of court.
This real world effectiveness is far lower than lab controlled confirmation that yes, the dogs are able to smell drugs. That doesn’t mean they are a reliable reason for police action since they can be following the officer’s cues or smelling residual smells when the person doesn’t have drugs on them.
It’s a classic detection theory problem. In this case, pretty much every false alarm doesn’t make it to court since the dogs come out before you are ever arrested, and missed detections are also not recorded. So unless cops are actually keeping records on false alarms there’s really no way to prosecute this.
Why can’t the efficacy of these dogs be tested in a lab, just like a clinical drug trial? 100 dogs, 50 shown box containing drugs. 50 shown placebo, handler and lab tech don’t know which is which. Then see whether the drugs outperform placebo in getting the dogs to alert.
Those dogs all operate on signaling from the handling officer.
If there is a long pattern of dogs are signaling “drugs” (irrespective of why they’re signaling) when there are no drugs found, that sounds like a great angle defense attorneys can use to get any evidence found thrown out of court.
Drug dogs being unreliable in the real world use by police is not a new topic so don’t get your hopes up.
https://www.livescience.com/9215-police-dogs-sniff-drugs.html
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-03/fact-check-are-drug-dogs-incorrect-75-pc-of-the-time/10568410
This real world effectiveness is far lower than lab controlled confirmation that yes, the dogs are able to smell drugs. That doesn’t mean they are a reliable reason for police action since they can be following the officer’s cues or smelling residual smells when the person doesn’t have drugs on them.
It’s a classic detection theory problem. In this case, pretty much every false alarm doesn’t make it to court since the dogs come out before you are ever arrested, and missed detections are also not recorded. So unless cops are actually keeping records on false alarms there’s really no way to prosecute this.
And they’d never collect that date because it would show the low accuracy and they’d lose the pretext for further investigation or arrests.
Why can’t the efficacy of these dogs be tested in a lab, just like a clinical drug trial? 100 dogs, 50 shown box containing drugs. 50 shown placebo, handler and lab tech don’t know which is which. Then see whether the drugs outperform placebo in getting the dogs to alert.
It’s not that it can’t, it’s that it won’t. Drug dogs are one of the tools of oppression used by the police.