(Guardian UK) Release is taking legal action against the British Transport Police (BTP) to determine if the use of sniffer dogs to detect drugs is lawful. If we are successful, the case will require the police to stop using sniffer dogs for this purpose.
The case was sparked by an incident in which Release’s executive director, Sebastian Saville was searched last year by the BTP at Camden Town underground station following a positive indication by a sniffer dog. Saville had no illegal drugs in his possession.
…The use of sniffer dogs to identify people carrying drugs as they make their way through London’s transport system is not only wrong in principle, but it is also ineffective in practice.
Australian research has found that in 74% of searches following an indication by a police dog no drugs were found. No equivalent comprehensive research has been conducted in the UK; however preliminary inquiries via freedom of information requests indicate that the deployment of police dogs here produces similar results. During Operation Shelter, conducted by the British Transport Police during Latitude festival in Ipswich in 2008, only 12% of searches conducted as a result of “tells” by police dogs located illegal drugs.
Sniffer dogs are not about catching drug dealers. The dogs lack the sophistication to distinguish between someone who has been in contact with drugs and someone who’s actually carrying them, let alone to determine what kind of quantity that person is carrying, and what they intend to do with it. Mr Hot Shot Dealer does not travel the tube with his stash. These dogs are not used to protect the public. They cannot be compared to metal detectors or dogs trained to identify bombs or knives, since drugs are not used as a weapon against the public. So the argument that the ends justify the means – used to defend searching thousands of visitors entering a venue on the grounds of protecting the public from an act of violence – cannot apply in the context of personal possession of drugs.
A dog is not an infallible and precise scientific measurement instrument, but police would like you to think they are. Drug K-9′s often alert just to appease their masters who are looking for an excuse to search a suspect without his or her permission. Dan Monnat gave an excellent presentation on this phenomenon at our 2008 Aspen Legal Conference.
Here’s the problem, though. A dog is not a scientific instrument. In a recent study it was found that dogs commonly false-alerted to subtle unconscious clues from their handlers. See: http://stash.norml.org/drug-dogs-false-alert-over-200-times-in-uc-davis-study
The partnership between man and dog is something I take very seriously (see: http://stash.norml.org/category/personal/dogs-personal). We co-evolved – their senses and abilities helped us survive and our intelligence and tool-making helped them survive. In that spirit, I think dogs are abused when they are used as a tool to hurt people – a dog’s spirit is to protect and serve humans (“protect and serve”, where have I heard that before?) not search and destroy.
I understand guard dogs and hunting dogs but in their proper use, they are protecting humans from the danger posed by other humans and serving humans by helping bag a tasty meal. That’s legit. That’s why I don’t have an issue with bomb sniffing dogs, cancer sniffing dogs, junkyard dogs (there’s a pack of four American Pit Bulls guarding a auto repair place just two blocks from my house), even police dogs taking down a fleeing perp or subduing a riot.
But there’s something about a “dope dog”, to borrow George Clinton’s phrase, “an undercover narc with a bark”. I’m sure prohibitionists would use my “protect humans” argument here as well, that the K-9 is sniffing out the terribly dangerous drugs that ruin our society. That poor dog doesn’t know his olfactory ability to detect ganja means some young man sitting in the Texas sun on the side of a highway while Rangers dismantle his car to find a roach so they can lock him up in a cage for a few years. He just points it out to his human and gets a tasty reward for doing so.
Plus, searches aren’t that illegal anymore on our own property. Cops can come onto out driveways and plant GPS on our cars. In Indiana, a sheriff is talking about random door-to-door searches in response to that state’s supreme court ruling this week. The smell of pot and a noise are all cops need to break down our doors.
Using sniffer dogs remains a legal tactic of policing. A potsmoker’s objection to the use of the dogs boils down to not the grounds of being stopped and searched under police powers, but the sentiment that the use of the dog’s heightened senses is tantamount to ‘cheating’ by the police…..dogs have been a part of policing and fighting wars for that matter for over 800 years in the United Kingdom with varying utilities. It is only logical that the partnership is continued and employed in the policing of public spaces. Searches remain illegal on your own property, so there really shouldn’t be a conflict with your ‘recreational’ usage.
– an american living in the UK
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