Lawsuit questions the reliability of police drug sniffing dogs.
In 2010, a team of researchers at the University of California, Davis set out to test the reliability of drug- and bomb-sniffing dogs.
The team assembled 18 police dogs and their handlers and gave them a routine task: go through a room and sniff out the drugs and explosives.
But there was a twist. The room was clean. No drugs, no explosives.
In order to pass the test, the handlers and their dogs had to go through the room and detect nothing.
But of 144 runs, that happened only 21 times, for a failure rate of 85 percent.
Although drug-sniffing dogs are supposed to find drugs on their own, the researchers concluded that they were influenced by their handlers, and that's what led to such a high failure rate.
The reliability of drug dogs and their handlers is at the heart of a lawsuit filed in state district court by two Nevada Highway Patrol K-9 troopers and a consultant, who claim that the Metropolitan Police Department's police dogs, and eventually NHP's own dogs, were "trick ponies" that responded to their handlers' cues, and therefore routinely violated citizens' rights to lawful search under the Fourth Amendment.
The lawsuit goes on to make a number of other accusations in its 104-page complaint: that the Metropolitan Police Department is a racketeering organization, that money seized by motorists was misappropriated by the Department of Public Safety, that the two troopers were subjected to harassment and intimidation by their agency.
But what has defense attorneys and civil advocates taking notice are the allegations of illegal searches, which could call into question the seizure of millions of dollars from motorists on Nevada highways and jeopardize an untold number of criminal cases stemming from those stops.
The U.S. Supreme Court has given police "probable cause" to search your vehicle if a police dog detects drugs, typically by sitting, digging or barking.
That is an extraordinary power - officers working without dogs need "a reasonable belief that a person has committed a crime" for such searches. Mere suspicion is not enough, and criminal cases resulting from searches that don't meet the "probable cause" standard can be, and are, tossed out in court.
The lawsuit claims that one fellow trooper would make stops in Arizona, out of his jurisdiction. Another profiled Hispanic motorists, checking license plates for Hispanic owners before pulling them over.
And the abuses weren't limited to their own department, they claim.
Often the K-9 troopers were partnered with a drug task force that paired them with Las Vegas police narcotics detectives and that agency's K-9 dogs. They would go to a FedEx sorting facility where, the troopers allege, Las Vegas police detectives took packages from a sorting belt and poked holes in them so their dogs could better sniff for drugs inside. In one case, a detective tore open a package and searched its contents.
All of this was done without the consent of the owners of the packages, which would be illegal.
After those allegations surfaced in a report last year by Dana Gentry, a producer for "Face to Face" on KSNV-TV, Channel 3, Las Vegas police investigated and ruled that the detectives' actions were legal, but the detectives did not follow policy because they didn't fill out required paperwork when drugs were not found.
The troopers' lawsuit also claims that the troopers witnessed Las Vegas police handlers abusing their dogs.
"In certain incidents they resort to hanging and then kicking the dog to get it to release," the lawsuit states. "Trooper Moonin has personally witnessed a Metro handler take his dog behind a car after missing a significant drug seizure and brutally kick his dog repeatedly."
According to the lawsuit. Las Vegas police trained their dogs to be "trick ponies" that would respond to handlers' cues when searching for drugs.
That caused the dogs to become more interested in getting treats or toys when searching for drugs, they claim. The Highway Patrol dogs, on the other hand, were not rewarded when they signaled for drugs.
McKenna said he has video proof of Las Vegas police handlers "cueing" their dogs. Two of those videos have been uploaded to YouTube:
Las Vegas Police K9 Uncovered Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K4P8AOjgbI
Las Vegas Police K9 Uncovered Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke_vGUMtZko&feature=relmfu
One, apparently from the dashboard camera of a Highway Patrol car, claims to show a Las Vegas police dog repeatedly walking past an ice chest with four pounds of methamphetamine inside during a traffic stop. The handler, who knew the drugs were inside, eventually stops by the ice chest with the dog and gives it a toy, signaling that the dog was successful in finding the drugs.
Las Vegas police declined to comment on the allegations of physical abuse and "cueing," saying they couldn't comment on pending litigation. But they said that all officers receive training to reflect updates to Fourth Amendment case law.
Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Gail Powell dismissed the allegations, saying they were untrue and that the lawsuit was filed by "disgruntled" officers.
Despite the wide legal latitude police dogs are given, there are few studies showing how successful, or unsuccessful, they are at finding drugs in the field.
But what does exist casts doubt on their reliability.
About a month after the results of the UC Davis experiment were released, the Chicago Tribune published a study looking into three years of drug searches by suburban Illinois police departments.
The study revealed that when dogs "alerted" officers to drugs, they were right 44 percent of the time. For Hispanic drivers, the rate was only 27 percent.
Police told the Tribune that when drugs weren't found, the dogs were detecting drug residue that was left in the vehicles.
But that explanation is bogus, according to Lawrence Myers, an Auburn University professor who has studied police dogs for 30 years.
While residual odors can cause false alerts, Myers said, too many dog handlers often use it as an excuse, making it all but impossible to assess accurately the reliability of the dog's nose or the validity of a search.
"Frankly, many times it's a search warrant on a leash," Myers said of the drug-sniffing police dog.
Nationwide, the K-9 training industry lacks the cohesion and standards that would allow for objective measuring of police dogs' reliability.
Through the Institute for Biological Detection Systems at Auburn University, which Myers founded in 1989, he has researched the effectiveness of drug-sniffing dogs while calling for the industry to improve its training methods and accountability.
For his efforts, he has been shunned by most in the industry, he said.
Fearing they will be blackballed themselves, many K-9 handlers don't speak out about problems they see in the industry, he said.
"I'm afraid there is a conspiracy of silence" within the tight-knit police dog community, Myers said.
http://www.lvrj.com/news/legal-challenge-questions-reliability-of-police-dogs-161759505.html
Moonin, Yarnall, Lee v. Nevada lawsuit:
http://www2.8newsnow.com/docs/k9_troopers.pdf