The dogs are trained to react when the officer is interested, because the handler is the one who hides the drugs, and rewards the dog when he finds the drugs. Except the officer knows where the drugs are, so the dog simply learns how to read the K9 Handler.
Drug sniffing dogs are worse than chance, this is not nefarious it’s just bad animal training. The owner of Clever Hans was NOT a con-man, he just was unaware that Hans was reading HIM when he got close to the correct number.
Also I love the “If you don’t have drugs in your ass you have nothing to worry about!” Yeah how about your vehicle being tossed, your body being searched, and unwanted X-rays, and possibly probing hands in your fart box?
That is not my idea of a fun evening.
Even if the dog could pass a double blind test, which is highly unlikely, there is still no way to prove that the dog isn’t cuing off the handler. The whole thing is more akin to those stupid dowsing rod things the cops keep falling for.
Yup. The only reason there is even an illusion that they’re better is that the cops doing a traffic stop or other search already have a pretty good idea of who is most likely to have drugs with them, so they only call for the dogs when they are already suspicious. It’s a classic case of sample bias.
Add in judges who aren’t well-versed in science, and you end up with the situation we have today, where the cops’ suspicion of drugs isn’t enough for probable cause, but the dog reacting to the cops’ suspicion is unassailable probable cause all by itself.
There was a study done by UC Davis on this very subject.
http://blog.norml.org/2011/02/04/drug-dogs-false-alert-over-200-times-in-uc-davis-study/