All About Drug Dogs

Here is an excerpt from David Clark's book "101 Ways to Beat a Marijuana Charge in Georgia." You can get your copy here.

Strategy 41: Drug dog not credible

People like dogs; unfortunately this outpouring of affection and respect for our loyal, furry friends has resulted in some bad law. At your home, and on the street, dogs are terrific pets, great friends and can assist in certain things like bomb sniffing and helping blind people find their way. I don't know what we would do without dogs.

In local law enforcement, however, dogs are a tool used for specific purpose. They use dogs to sniff out drugs. Dogs have very sensitive noses and can be trained to detect illegal drugs inside a car or a suitcase.  People have an inflated opinion of how accurate they are. Dogs, like any other creatures, are subject to reproductive cycles and hormones and moods. They also get injured, they also get sick. These things all affect their training and reliability. If an officer was to use a telescope in his work the telescope would enhance his sense of sight. A drug dog enhances the officer's sense of smell. No human being can smell drugs inside a truck or car.
Your lawyer can make a compelling case that drug dogs are not reliable enough to establish probable cause to search.

In a 2003 Florida case, a trained drug detection dog named "Razor," alerted on a vehicle during a routine traffic stop. This provided probable cause to search the vehicle and deputies found assorted drugs in the glove compartment. The defense moved to suppress the drugs, on the basis that Razor's ability to detect drugs was unreliable. The police said had Razor's trainer come in to say that the dog received training from the Sheriff, and was certified by the United States Police Canine Association (USPCA). The defense countered with an expert who testified that the training was deficient. The expert proved that there was (1) inadequate training for searching vehicles, (2) lack of training for small quantities of drugs, (3) failure to plant novel odors during the training sessions, (4) no controlled negative testing, (5) no extinction training was provided which would discourage the dog from alerting on common items sometimes associated with drugs, and (6) the training did not include "stimulus generalization" which conditions the dog trained on one class of drugs to alert on all drugs in that class.

The expert also disparaged that USPCA certification in that (1) there was no controlled negative testing, (2) the training searches were limited to ten minutes instead of "real world" time for searches, (3) the organization requires only a seventy percent proficiency to be certified, and (4) they fail to focus on the dog's ability to detect narcotics as opposed to analyzing the ability of the dog and handler as a team. Razor's handler admitted that he did not maintain a record of the canine's false alert rate. After all that, the trial judge still voted with the police, and the defendant had to appeal. The appellate court reversed and suppressed the evidence.

Based on the testimony in this particular case, the court ruled that the training Razor received, together with the lack of performance, created doubts as to the canine's reliability. Razor's alert was therefore useless, and did not provide probable cause to search the vehicle.

Dogs can surely sniff out marijuana and other drugs, but they tend to sniff out too many things and give "false positives." This is not a problem for police officers, because if the dog sniffs something that's not marijuana, but alerts anyway, they still get to bust you. You very rarely hear anything about drug dogs failing on the job or misfiring. Incidents where they give a false positive or false negative are not recorded. I have never seen a dog alert log kept by any cop in Georgia. Drug dogs are, in fact, a blunt instrument with which to detect illegal substances.

If your case depends on drug dog evidence carefully consider hiring expert to debunk the myths surrounding drug dogs. The prosecution will almost certainly not bring in a countervailing expert to rebut your theory. If your expert comes in and testifies about the training that the dog has received and how inadequate it is, and how these dogs are not reliable enough to use in search and seizure applications, you may win your case when the judge is not convinced that the search was reasonable. Be sure and demand public records about the particular dog used. Analyze them for any weaknesses in training, gaps in service, veterinary records, anything to show that this particular dog has had a spotty record or has not been carefully watched for errors.

If there are no records, then that can become your argument. What kind of police equipment never goes wrong? Copiers jam, flash lights run out of batteries, and radios go on the fritz. Every piece of equipment in the police officers world has broken down or malfunctioned at one time or another. Why not the dog? Has Government procurement suddenly improved to the point of infallibility?

Drug dog alerts are not scientific enough to provide probable cause to search a car, a bag, or a package. (But you're still a good boy, Razor! Yes you are!!)