Ex-cop: Police 'using dogs to trample our rights as citizens'
CHICAGO, Illinois - January 6, 2011 - A study of "false positives" involving drug-sniffing police dogs suggests some police forces may be using canines to do an end-run around constitutional protections against search and seizure, and may be profiling racial minorities in the process.
A survey of primarily suburban police departments in Illinois, carried out by the Chicago Tribune, found that 56% of all police searches triggered by a drug-sniffing dog turned up nothing.
But, perhaps tellingly, that number jumped to 73% when the search involved a Latino subject - meaning that nearly three-quarters of all dog alerts on Latinos turned up no contraband. The study covered a two-year period from 2007 to 2009.
Police spokespeople say the numbers are no surprise, because dogs' noses can sniff the residue of drugs on a person or in a vehicle long after the drugs have been removed.
But civil liberties advocates smell a rat, and say this is evidence that police are using canines to carry out racial profiling and unjustified searches. Dog-training experts say the problem stems at least in part from an almost complete lack of standards for police dogs in the U.S.
"We know that there is a level of racial profiling going on and this is just another indicator of that," Virginia Martinez, an attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, told the Tribune. "People of color are just targets."
Barry Cooper, a former Texas police officer who has worked with police dogs, told Raw Story that the use of canines has "gone out of control in Amerika. They're using dogs as an excuse to search cars when people refuse consent. The reason it's like this is because the dogs aren't always really alerting: it's actually the cops using those dogs to trample our rights as Citizens."
Cooper said he was recently hired to assess an Arizona police dog handler's record. "Out of 50 traffic stops, the canine reportedly alerted on every car but four. Drugs were only found on six occasions," he said.
