Court: State must prove Oregon drug dog reliability

[Quantum Windbag]

Bravo

In a pair of cases involving routine traffic stops, the Oregon Supreme Court has ruled that prosecutors must prove the reliability of a drug detection dog when a police officer relies on the dog to conduct a search without a warrant.The court ruled Thursday that several factors must be weighed to determine reliability, including training and certification.
In one case, the court upheld the Yamhill County conviction of a man arrested after a dog led officers to a pipe with methamphetamine residue inside a car. In the companion case, the court ruled the dog was not proven to be reliable and overturned an Umatilla County trial court.

Court: State must prove Oregon drug dog reliability - Breaking News, Local News, Local Weather, Local Sports

 

[martybegan]

I just can't wait to read the procedure on how to calibrate a dog.

 

[California Girl]

How ridiculous. Dog finds drugs, there you go, that's his 'certification' for ya.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

How ridiculous. Dog finds drugs, there you go, that's his 'certification' for ya.

Oregon is Liberal lala land. Surprised they even found one acceptable.

These douche bags outlawed Nuclear power in their State and spent YEARS buying power from Washington Nuclear power plants.

 

[George Costanza]

How ridiculous. Dog finds drugs, there you go, that's his 'certification' for ya.

Absolutely. And cops make arrests - so why have trials? There you go.

 

[del]

seems reasonable to me. does anyone think a dog should be able to infringe on your rights just because someone says it's properly trained?

i don't.

 

[del]

if they had a warrant i'd agree

 

[George Costanza]

Bravo

In a pair of cases involving routine traffic stops, the Oregon Supreme Court has ruled that prosecutors must prove the reliability of a drug detection dog when a police officer relies on the dog to conduct a search without a warrant.The court ruled Thursday that several factors must be weighed to determine reliability, including training and certification.
In one case, the court upheld the Yamhill County conviction of a man arrested after a dog led officers to a pipe with methamphetamine residue inside a car. In the companion case, the court ruled the dog was not proven to be reliable and overturned an Umatilla County trial court.

Court: State must prove Oregon drug dog reliability - Breaking News, Local News, Local Weather, Local Sports

But in the first case, the dog found the drugs. So how is the dog incompetent? If they had searched, based on the dog's alerting, found no drugs but, instead, found a murder weapon, then I could see questioning the validity of the search. But the dog found the drugs here. (Not clear whether the dog found the drugs or not in the second case.)

Hmmmmm . . . .

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Bravo

In a pair of cases involving routine traffic stops, the Oregon Supreme Court has ruled that prosecutors must prove the reliability of a drug detection dog when a police officer relies on the dog to conduct a search without a warrant.The court ruled Thursday that several factors must be weighed to determine reliability, including training and certification.
In one case, the court upheld the Yamhill County conviction of a man arrested after a dog led officers to a pipe with methamphetamine residue inside a car. In the companion case, the court ruled the dog was not proven to be reliable and overturned an Umatilla County trial court.

Court: State must prove Oregon drug dog reliability - Breaking News, Local News, Local Weather, Local Sports

But in the first case, the dog found the drugs. So how is the dog incompetent? If they had searched, based on the dog's alerting, found no drugs but, instead, found a murder weapon, then I could see questioning the validity of the search. But the dog found the drugs here. (Not clear whether the dog found the drugs or not in the second case.)

Hmmmmm . . . .

How many times has that drug alerted and triggered a search, and no drugs were found? If the dog alerts every single time they point it at someone's car it will eventually be right.

If you ever have a drug case involving a dog you should ask questions like that in discovery. Most dogs are, at best, about 50% accurate in the field. Even the best dogs sometimes alert if their handlers expect to find something, even when there is nothing there.

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.

Animal behaviour: Clever hounds | The Economist

Tell me something. If the following incident had occurred anywhere but at a school would any of the searches been legal?

Police used two dogs to sniff all the lockers at Edison and Marshall middle schools on Friday. No drugs were found. The dogs swept all the schools’ lockers. They reacted 14 times at Edison and 13 times at Marshall, said district spokeswoman Sheryl Miller.
When a dog reacts, lockers are searched. Often, nothing is found, although the dogs could have been reacting to residual traces of drugs, police have said.

Searches by dogs yield no drugs at Janesville middle schools -- GazetteXtra

 

[George Costanza]

How many times has that drug (dog?) alerted and triggered a search, and no drugs were found? If the dog alerts every single time they point it at someone's car it will eventually be right.

If you ever have a drug case involving a dog you should ask questions like that in discovery. Most dogs are, at best, about 50% accurate in the field. Even the best dogs sometimes alert if their handlers expect to find something, even when there is nothing there.

Kind of hard to convince a judge that a successful search should be set aside on the basis that, even though the dog alerted properly in this case, he may not be a reliable dog in general, so the results of the search should be suppressed.

I guess it might be analagous to a cop who goes around barging into houses witn no PC whatseover - just because he hits every now and then does not make his entry with no PC valid, in spite of the fact that he hit something on this one occasion.

 

[AllieBaba]

One assumes the only time this would come up would be at trial, so one would PRESUME that drugs were found...

in that case, really, isn't it a bit ridiculous to prove the dog can find drugs when the dog did, in fact, find drugs?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

How many times has that drug (dog?) alerted and triggered a search, and no drugs were found? If the dog alerts every single time they point it at someone's car it will eventually be right.

If you ever have a drug case involving a dog you should ask questions like that in discovery. Most dogs are, at best, about 50% accurate in the field. Even the best dogs sometimes alert if their handlers expect to find something, even when there is nothing there.

Kind of hard to convince a judge that a successful search should be set aside on the basis that, even though the dog alerted properly in this case, he may not be a reliable dog in general, so the results of the search should be suppressed.

I guess it might be analagous to a cop who goes around barging into houses witn no PC whatseover - just because he hits every now and then does not make his entry with no PC valid, in spite of the fact that he hit something on this one occasion.

I never said it would be easy.

Just think of the rewards though, knowing that a case you fought, and lost, on the basis of the drug dog not being reliable eventually results in a decision on a par with Miranda in the Supreme Court. That will leave all the conservatives cursing the name of your client and chipping away at the case for the next century.

And no one will even know your name.

 

[George Costanza]

One assumes the only time this would come up would be at trial, so one would PRESUME that drugs were found...

in that case, really, isn't it a bit ridiculous to prove the dog can find drugs when the dog did, in fact, find drugs?

God, you have NO IDEA how I hate this . . . .

I agree with you.

(But, actually, with regard to you first sentence here, no - search and seizure issues are pre-trial issues, decided by the judge. The jury plays no part in deciding the validity of a search.)

 

[percysunshine]

When I was in college, I had a labrador. When ever I brought a date back to the apartment, the first thing he would do would be to lope over and sniff her crotch...wag his tail...and bark.

Did this give me probable cause for a search?