Drug-Sniffing Dogs Reflect Police Bias
[EDIT: this isn't getting the (positive) karma I expected it to. Anyone has a hint?]This article isn't nearly as convincing as the author hopes. (S)he mainly argues that drug dogs catch too many innocents to allow them to be used as "probable cause" for searches. However,"The [extensive] review [of the Austrialian New South Wales Ombudsman] found that illegal drugs were found in only 26% of all searches that were initiated after a handler indicated that a dog alerted on the subject."If there were a cheap-ish test that detected bombs with this accuracy, wouldn't we want to use it? Even if a few innocents would be unjustly searched?I also agree with the author that we should look more closely at methodological issues of drug dogs; but this article is only convincing if you support the underlying premise that drugs aren't (all that) bad. (I do.)(The article speculates that police dogs could be trained by their handlers to alert e.g. on blacks, but doesn't show that this actually happens, or that police dogs are more racist than police officers. The article also argues that dog-based evidence is not very strong, but only cites a case where it was thrown out; and "probable cause" is far weaker than "sufficient evidence to convict" anyway.)