Re:Court rules drug dog barely more accurate than a coin fli...
by shkkmo on Friday August 07, 2015 @03:29PM
(#10024482)
But... you are missing the point yet again. The officer's own judgement is not probable cause without specific indicators (e.g. visual evidence).
"The problem here is that invasive searches based on no more than a government official’s hunch is precisely what the Fourth Amendment is supposed to guard against."
Due to the high alert rate, we actually have a pretty good idea of the base rate of drugs in the situations that this dog is being used in (~50-60%).
The question is whether the dog is actually providing probable cause when the dog has such a high false positive rate.
The assertion of the article is specifically that drug dogs are being used and trained by police in ways that allow them to be be used as "a probable cause generator".
"The Supreme Court originally gave its imprimatur to drug dog sniffs because when used properly, the dog’s finely tuned sense of smell can detect drugs and their absence with incredible precision. But that caveat — when used properly — is critical. If a drug dog isn’t eliminating any innocent people, if it’s validating the suspicions of the police nine out of ten times resulting in searches for which up to half or more of the suspects are innocent, then descriptors such as finely tuned and incredible precision no longer apply."
Thus the base rate that we should be judging the dog against is not the base rate in the general population, but the base rate in the dog's tested sample. We need to incentivize the cultivation of higher levels of accuracy that the dogs are capable of providing.
"The problem here is that invasive searches based on no more than a government official’s hunch is precisely what the Fourth Amendment is supposed to guard against."
Due to the high alert rate, we actually have a pretty good idea of the base rate of drugs in the situations that this dog is being used in (~50-60%).
The question is whether the dog is actually providing probable cause when the dog has such a high false positive rate.
The assertion of the article is specifically that drug dogs are being used and trained by police in ways that allow them to be be used as "a probable cause generator".
"The Supreme Court originally gave its imprimatur to drug dog sniffs because when used properly, the dog’s finely tuned sense of smell can detect drugs and their absence with incredible precision. But that caveat — when used properly — is critical. If a drug dog isn’t eliminating any innocent people, if it’s validating the suspicions of the police nine out of ten times resulting in searches for which up to half or more of the suspects are innocent, then descriptors such as finely tuned and incredible precision no longer apply."
Thus the base rate that we should be judging the dog against is not the base rate in the general population, but the base rate in the dog's tested sample. We need to incentivize the cultivation of higher levels of accuracy that the dogs are capable of providing.