[HN Gopher] A police dog who cried drugs at every traffic stop
___________________________________________________________________
A police dog who cried drugs at every traffic stop
Author : pessimizer
Score : 117 points
Date : 2021-05-17 18:23 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (reason.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (reason.com)
| paulpauper wrote:
| Smell should not be used as probable cause. You cannot take a
| picture or document smell.
| iso8859-1 wrote:
| Why not? You can jam electrodes into the dog skull and log its
| brain state.
| klyrs wrote:
| You can literally "take a picture of a smell" with a mass
| spectrometer. But that's expensive kit that needs training to
| use and experts to maintain. Justice isn't worth as much as a
| year in prison costs, apparently
| smt88 wrote:
| Another anecdote: a friend of mine had weed in his locker in high
| school, and a random search by drug dogs didn't find it. The
| locker was vented, so it wasn't an airflow issue.
|
| A huge proportion of popular forensic techniques are BS,
| including "psychological profiling" that has been glorified on
| many TV shows.
| waymon wrote:
| Any positives from the "war on drugs?"
| Clubber wrote:
| Much less drug use ... oh wait, never mind. A lot more people
| employed as police, court employees and prison guards?
| emj wrote:
| Letting the Police take the money from Civil Forfeit is bonkers,
| John Oliver has an entertaining take on it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks
| michaelmrose wrote:
| It was only briefly touched on but this is the candidate for
| Governor of Washington State who lost by over half a million
| votes in an election with fewer than 5 million votes. This is to
| say he lost by a city not a country mile because he was very
| popular in Eastern WA where around 25% of the population lives
| but a dud elsewhere.
|
| This is pretty much par for the course in a state divided by both
| a mountain range and political ideology but what was unusual is
| that along with Trump Culp promoted the big lie that Trump had
| only lost the election because of rampant cheating and rolled
| Washington State into this perverse narrative with a side order
| of immigrant hate by making them the villains that stole WA from
| both Trump and Culp.
|
| According to Culp he and Trump were the proper inheritors of
| power in Washington and the nation. He even promised to uncover
| and reverse the fraud through lawsuits although he lacked the
| money to go through the show of reclaiming his "rightful place"
| via lawsuit he still fund raised off it as if he was going to and
| his fan club crowed about how great it would be when our actual
| governor was perp walked to depending on whom you asked prison or
| execution for treason.
|
| He is a disease right up their with the eastern Washington
| congressman Matt Shea whom we somehow just recently got rid of
| who published a paper on the biblical basis for war wherein it
| discussed the creation of an ISIS like biblical state following
| the fall of America in which wrong thinking women would be
| subjugated and wrong thinking men would simply be murdered.
|
| From Matt Sheas writing
|
| Under one heading, "Rules of War," it makes a chilling
| prescription for enemies who flout "biblical law." It states, "If
| they do not yield - kill all males."
|
| https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2018/oct/26/rep-matt-shea-...
|
| Even in our relatively liberal states the right is breeding
| ideologues, traitors, and terrorists who make real and solid the
| claims and fears that proponents of the red scare imagined. It
| turns out their fan fiction was written while looking into a
| mirror.
| waiseristy wrote:
| It is very typical of Western WA residents to blame the East
| side for voting red. King, Pierce, and Snohomish had more votes
| for Culp than the entire east side of the state combined. The
| Cascades are a mountain range, not some magical political wall
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Looking at the exact numbers 21% of people in Washington live
| in Eastern Washington whereas those 3 counties you listed
| house 52% of the state.
|
| It makes sense that even if you had less Culp voters
| proportionally if you look at over half the state you will
| find more people in absolute numbers. Your cherry picked
| absolute numbers are less functional than looking at
| proportions.
|
| Lets go to the map!
|
| https://www.politico.com/2020-election/results/washington/
|
| 2020 Election Results By County:
|
| King: Biden 75.4% Trump: 22.4%
|
| Pierce: Biden 54.2% Trump: 42.9%
|
| Snohomish: Biden 58.9% Trump 38.2%
|
| Eastern WA
|
| Stevens: Biden 27.7% Trump 70%
|
| Douglas: Biden 36.9% Trump 61.2%
|
| Spokane: Biden 46.3% Trump 50.7%
|
| Through most of Eastern WA Trump got 60-70% of the vote in a
| state where overall he got 39% of the vote. The division is
| extremely clear.
|
| In case its not lets look at Culps race.
|
| https://www.politico.com/2020-election/results/washington/go.
| ..
|
| King: Inslee 74.3% Culp 25.7%
|
| Spokane: Inslee 45% Culp 55%
|
| Stevens: Inslee 26.1% Culp 73.9
|
| If Eastern WA was its own state it would be as Red as
| Tennessee. If Western WA was its own state it would be bluer
| than California.
| waiseristy wrote:
| There is no doubt that there is a divide in voting
| proportionality between Eastern and Western WA.
|
| > This is to say he lost by a city not a country mile
| because he was very popular in Eastern WA where around 25%
| of the population lives but a dud elsewhere.
|
| He very much did not lose by a city vs a country mile
| because of 21% of the vote that went 65-35. The race was
| close-ish because 1.2 million Western WA residents voted
| for him
| ineedasername wrote:
| We already have technology that can do this job:
| https://keprtv.com/news/local/new-technology-can-sniff-out-d...
|
| Hopefully it's just a matter of time before we can replace owner-
| pleasing dogs with something that won't give a false positive in
| order to get a pat on the head and a treat.
| Forbo wrote:
| That's assuming they keep up on any necessary calibration and
| maintenance, as well as proper training. Just seems like
| another potential avenue for abuse and/or false positives.
| wahern wrote:
| Calibration and maintenance of electronic devices is much
| more transparent. Defense attorneys successfully challenge
| breathalyzers and similar instruments all the time.
|
| One reason dogs are unlikely to be replaced by a device is
| precisely because 1) dogs are opaque instruments not readily
| susceptible to critical analysis, and 2) have long been given
| the benefit of a doubt--much like cops' famed mind-reading
| faculties. From the perspective of the police, it's a don't
| break what isn't broken situation.
| cwkoss wrote:
| I feel like police forensic techniques are still stuck in the
| dark ages. I'd imagine there are similar issues with disregarding
| chance of false positives to make convictions easily in:
|
| - drug analysis
|
| - DNA segment matching
|
| - digital forensics
|
| - lineup identifications
|
| - police sketches
| ravenstine wrote:
| They haven't needed to advance that much. Shows like Forensic
| Files, COPS and so forth have convinced most people that the
| police are far more effective than they really are. Most people
| have no idea that the majority of crimes, including violent
| ones, go unsolved. (although this shouldn't be surprising to
| anyone who's actually been a victim of a crime)
|
| This isn't to say that policing in its current form isn't
| effective at all, but the media (whether intentionally or not)
| have done an excellent job as the propaganda department for the
| police.
|
| Why improve when everyone believes you're superman?
| paulpauper wrote:
| that is sorta a myth. they often get solved but it may take a
| long time. Murder cases for example are never declared
| unsolved unless a suspect is charged or the presumed
| perpetrator is dead due to age or other reasons.
| ravenstine wrote:
| I presume you meant that they are never declared _solved_
| [unless...]? It seems pretty farfetched to say that murder
| cases are considered solved by default even when a
| reasonable person would consider them to be unsolved.
| mindcrime wrote:
| _Shows like Forensic Files, COPS and so forth have convinced
| most people that the police are far more effective than they
| really are._
|
| _but the media (whether intentionally or not) have done an
| excellent job as the propaganda department for the police._
|
| Personally I say "no way is this anything but intentional".
| There's way too much pro-cop, pro-military-industrial-
| complex, pro-sook-agency crap on TV for it to be just
| accidental. Propaganda is exactly what it is.
| mindcrime wrote:
| s/pro-sook-agency/pro-spook-agency/
| bigyikes wrote:
| Or, apply Occam's razor. People like watching cop and
| detective shows.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Depends on what you mean by intentional.
|
| I don't think it's an organized effort merely to promote
| law enforcement from a political standpoint.
|
| Rather, I think such shows are made because they sell well
| to two crowds: the pro law enforcement crowd and those with
| a curiosity for true crime.
| handoflixue wrote:
| Simple incentives seem to explain that one without needing
| much of a conspiracy:
|
| If you're buddy-buddy with the cops, they'll help promote
| you, talk to you about cool cases they worked, etc.. If
| you're instead critical of the cops, they're going to try
| and undermine you instead.
|
| This means that doing a cop show that's anti-cop would be
| like doing a medical show without ever being able to
| consult a doctor. You can do it, but you're going to have
| to put a lot more work into research to get the same sense
| of verisimilitude.
| samatman wrote:
| DNA matching is shockingly precise, it absolutely should be the
| gold standard for evidence.
|
| Unfortunately, there have been multiple cases where it turns
| out the forensic analysis simply wasn't performed, the
| technician just put whatever the prosecutor wanted to see on
| the form.
|
| Easy way around this is double-blinding the evidence. The fact
| that this isn't done should make DNA evidence inadmissible in
| court until the relevant authorities clean up their act.
| leephillips wrote:
| Some of these are well known. Also, fingerprints. And look up
| the Prosecutor's Fallacy. In many cases, the forensic evidence
| is just theater, and the cops/prosecutors know it is
| meaningless. But juries and judges buy it.
| swiley wrote:
| The heavy use of fingerprints by cops and immigration bureaus
| feels extremely barbaric once you read a bit about them.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| It's really terrible that these are so clearly broken, and yet
| they are still used. It's a whole field jerking itself around.
| It reminds me of the phrase, "Something needs to be done. This
| is something, therefore this needs to be done."
|
| It's remarkable that pseudoscience is a big part of how we
| (don't) protect our rights.
|
| To rant for a second, it seems like a case of what I encounter
| at work too often as a data scientist. It drives me nuts.
| There's some statistical fallacy where lay people infer one
| thing, while the logical inference is something else for some
| subtle reason, and they respond to the critique with, 'well,
| yeah but we don't need a super rigorous answer here,' or
| something along those lines. As if a wrong answer is more
| correct when you 'don't need rigor.'
|
| I think we're in that boat because people so easily mistake
| approximate correctness in the sense of 'this answer is very
| nearly the right answer' with approximate correctness in the
| sense of 'this reasoning is very close to the right reasoning.'
| The two are interchangeable often enough to create the bad
| habit, like if you discard an assumption that is very probably
| true enough, or discard a term that is small. But when they
| aren't interchangeable, they're really really not
| interchangeable.
|
| (We're also in that boat because enough people cry wolf about
| rigor in the other direction, like complaining about discarding
| an error term that really is small enough to safely/rigorously
| discard)
| pwdisswordfish8 wrote:
| Highlighting this part, which might otherwise go unnoticed:
|
| > Instead of birthday cake and ice cream, she got jail food and a
| bill for hygiene supplies
|
| To spell it out, although she wasn't charged in the criminal
| sense, she _was_ "charged" financially--for the privilege of
| experiencing false arrest.
|
| There are other states with extremely messed up legal processes,
| such as those where not only convicted persons receive a bill for
| their public defender (which at least makes some sense,
| logically) but states where you are on hook for thousands of
| dollars _even in the event that you are never tried_ or _you are
| tried and found not guilty_.
| moshmosh wrote:
| Some relatives of mine got to experience a fun little hostage
| situation with, "either you pay [absurd figure] per month for a
| couple years for drug rehab at a facility we chose, for your
| adult kid, plus smaller amounts of money for other stuff pretty
| much indefinitely, or or they rot in prison rather than getting
| out on probation".
|
| On the one hand, the guy definitely did something bad. On the
| other hand, gee I wonder how generational cycles of poverty,
| driving future crime rates, happen. No mystery that the effects
| of criminality seems to afflict _entire families_ when the
| justice system is actively contributing to that.
|
| And no, it's not like they only got charged that much because
| they're flush with cash. I'm pretty sure the courts didn't give
| a damn whether they could afford it (technically, yes they
| could, but in anything resembling a financially-responsible
| sense, god no, not at all, they weren't starting from a great
| spot and it basically ruined them--the bread-winner will now
| work until he dies or gets so sick he can't anymore)
| syshum wrote:
| >>On the one hand, the guy definitely did something bad
|
| if the "bad thing" was voluntarily ingesting a chemical that
| state has no ethical authority to ban a person from ingesting
| into their own body then I would urge you to reformulate what
| you consider a "bad thing"
|
| Drug Abuse can lead to all manner of actual crime (theft,
| Intoxicated Driving, etc) that has a degree of probability to
| harm OTHERS, this is where the states power can be ethically
| applies, when a persons actions can directly physically harm
| another person against that persons will.
|
| However state power should never be considered ethical when
| they are attempting to "protect people from themselves" this
| mentality leads to all kinds of abuse by authority and create
| the very system that causes the issue you highlight
| plank_time wrote:
| I don't have much sympathy for people that commit actual
| crimes. There are too many innocent people being arrested to
| worry about the guilty ones.
|
| They chose to spend their money to keep their son out of
| jail. Thats was their choice. That's the consequence of the
| son committing what appears to be a major crime. Hopefully
| the son learns from that and he should be working to help
| repay that debt.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| > I don't have much sympathy for people that commit actual
| crimes.
|
| Even when the "crime" doesn't hurt anybody except the
| "offender?" GP post strongly implies the charge was some
| sort of possession charge. Drug addicts do not need to be
| punished any more than they punish themselves.
| plank_time wrote:
| GP did not strongly imply it was possession. They said
| the guy "definitely did something bad". So it sounds like
| to me it's something more than just simple possession.
| That's what I'm going with.
| moshmosh wrote:
| Yeah, it was worse than that, but waaaaaay under
| something that would get people to say "lock them up and
| throw away the key!" Also wasn't any kind of hate-related
| or vulnerable-group-targeting thing, of the kind that
| would get a person a torrent of death threats on twitter.
|
| 100% the kind of thing someone ought to be punished for
| (unlike simple possession, certainly). The main thing I
| find objectionable is that one must pay a flat-fee ransom
| to an assuredly-connected-to-important-people-and-
| overcharging commercial entity to get one's children out
| of jail. There are a few things wrong with that, but
| fundamentally it sucks that how much money you (or your
| family) have determines so much about how harsh a
| punishment is. It can be anywhere from "a little annoying
| but no lasting harm done to anyone" to "everyone in your
| immediate family's quality of life is now 10-80% worse,
| measured over a lifetime", for _exactly_ the same crime.
|
| [EDIT] and on a less personal level, the thing that
| bothers me about it is that a justice system that intends
| to reduce crime rates should avoid at all costs being a
| _driver_ of poverty.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| You know, you didn't actually answer the question I
| asked....
| meowface wrote:
| I read the GP post as suggesting an actual crime likely
| occurred. You, I, and many others (especially people who
| tend to use HN) don't consider drug use an actual crime.
| Judges sometimes sentence (actual) criminals to drug
| rehab programs as an alternative to jail for certain
| things, e.g. if perhaps someone burglarized homes to fund
| a drug addiction.
|
| I have no idea, though. It would've been better if they
| gave a little more detail about the nature of the crime.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Sure, that's possible. But, even if it were some sort of
| _other_ crime that was exacerbated or precipitated by a
| drug addiction, the fact that the sentence included the
| option of rehab + probation seriously limits the badness
| of that crime.
|
| If this were the scenario, and I had to guess, I would
| say it probably was some sort of property crime. People
| other than the perpetrator tend not to get seriously
| (physically) injured in most property crimes, and
| insurance often covers the damages. In any case, monetary
| restitution to cover the damage plus rehab. should be a
| sufficient sentence.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| >"There are too many innocent people being arrested to
| worry about the guilty ones."
|
| Ow, wow. That's like 17th century thinking right there,
| when we used to hang people for petty theft, executions
| were a public holiday, folks thought it would deter crime
| but it stayed sky high.
|
| Also boiling people alive was a thing, and, most
| egregiously, we overboiled them.
|
| I am willing to bet that you or someone in your family or
| friends has broken some law somewhere at some point,
| possibly without realising. I don't think this line of
| thinking leads to a good place.
| plank_time wrote:
| A close family member almost went to jail because they
| committed theft over $25,000. Had they gone to jail, I
| think it would have been easily deserved. I wouldn't have
| had much sympathy for them either, and they are like a
| sibling to me. If you knowingly commit a crime, why
| exactly should one deserve sympathy when they did it with
| full knowledge of the consequences?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| The idea is not thay noone should ever face consequences,
| but they must be afforded full protections of due process
| and be treated fairly.
|
| The antithesis to this would be the police pinning
| another nearby robbery on your relative just cause he is
| guity already, or violating his right in some way.
| rectang wrote:
| When police selectively enforce the laws, a lack of
| sympathy for the guilty guarantees that systemic
| discrimination goes unredressed. It's not just that a dog
| like Karma exists, it's who the police choose to inflict
| Karma on.
| plank_time wrote:
| Just because some people are let off doesn't mean they
| the actually-guilty aren't guilty.
|
| Criminals need to be punished. Period. End of story. What
| is going on in SF and the large jump in crime and
| violence is a direct consequence of not wanting to
| prosecute criminals.
| kodah wrote:
| > I don't have much sympathy for people that commit actual
| crimes. There are too many innocent people being arrested
| to worry about the guilty ones.
|
| What's an actual crime _to you_? I bet our definitions
| differ based on something not-so-quantifiable. A good DA
| can produce charges against someone to make it look like an
| _actual_ crime was committed when it 's really something
| petty or much less nefarious. We've seen countless examples
| of this.
|
| Rather than describing my sympathies at some nebulous
| level, I'd rather say this: I have sympathy for those in
| the criminal justice system because I realize most people
| are capable of change and that is mostly ignored by the
| public and the criminal justice system together. Former
| criminals are almost never rehabbed, and worse we see many
| examples of folks who were never criminals being introduced
| to a system that by default does not care about them but
| carries maximal implications for their life.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| Something tells me that if Police (in the USA) sees a white
| person sleeping on a Porsche in an expenive shopping mall,
| they will "sit back and stand by" to ensure that nobody
| will disturb the sleep of the rich-white-folk.
|
| It is clear that US Police is thriving on discrimination
| and malpractice.
|
| As long as police officers don't pay out of their own
| pocket the damages they cause, this won't stop.
|
| Guys... (you over in the USA).. you got some major problems
| to solve. We, on the European side of this planet are super
| surprised how you let some things STILL be happening, by
| your various police bodies. You either don't care, or (even
| worse) you are deeply divided and disagreeing on what's
| "right" and what's "wrong".
|
| It's a pity.
| dang wrote:
| We've warned you before not to post nationalistic
| flamebait to HN. If you do it again we will ban you. (It
| doesn't matter which country is at issue.)
|
| Discussions on sensitive, divisive topics are hard enough
| without someone pouring petrol on the fires. It may not
| be arson, but it's at least negligence, and it's
| destructive. Please stop.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| kube-system wrote:
| We do care, but you must understand that policing (and
| the majority of government that Americans interact with)
| is fragmented by design under our significantly federated
| system of government. As much discussion as this gets on
| a national level, meaningful change in this realm means
| change at the local level. And that's where things start
| to break down, because the most egregious cases of abuse
| are happening in places that disproportionately benefit
| from these abuses.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Except it costs money to incarcerate someone in jail, and
| doing that & foregoing the dedicated drug treatment also
| means the person is more likely to relapse and cost society
| even more money.
|
| Especially for drugs, we need to move away from a
| punishment/vengeance system of justice and towards a
| rehabilitation/lowest TCO form of treatment.
| plank_time wrote:
| Punishing criminals is more important than saving money.
|
| Simple possession shouldn't be a crime but crimes
| themselves shouldn't be consequence-free otherwise it
| turns a city into a shithole. Look at SF over the last
| few years.
| syshum wrote:
| The deterrent effect of punishment has been proven many
| times to be no where near as strong as law abiding people
| believe it to be. Now you can say "well you just need
| harsher punishment" but many systems has disproven this
| as well.
|
| Jail should be reserved for people who a direct physical
| threat to other peoples bodies or properties. Continued
| incarceration should be viewed from that lens as well.
|
| Victim Compensation should be a higher priority instead
| of punishment, instead we put almost no priority to
| Victim Compensation instead viewing the crime as a "crime
| against society" and the person "pays a debt to society"
| that is the wrong position.
| moshmosh wrote:
| It's less about sympathy than about how you structure a
| justice system if you _don 't_ want more crime in the
| future. A lot of things about our justice system work very
| much counter to how you'd do things if your main goal was
| to _have less crime_. See also: banning certain kinds of
| government college aid for people with drug-related
| convictions. If you care about recidivism and cycles of
| poverty & crime why would you _make it harder_ for people
| who 've done their time and gotten out to contribute
| positively to society?
|
| From a sheer fairness and _what is justice actually_ POV,
| it 's bullshit that this is yet another thing a rich family
| can shrug off, while a poor family is screwed. I don't have
| a solution for it, but the role money plays in our justice
| system may well be _the_ biggest problem with it, which is
| saying something.
|
| > Hopefully the son learns from that and he should be
| working to help repay that debt.
|
| Very unlikely, with a record. A decade later and he's doing
| OK, for values of OK that include "can mostly pay own not-
| large bills, and only because he's living with his parents,
| and is steadily and consistently progressing in a low-
| paying field". Last I checked he's still "in the system" to
| some extent, as far as ongoing fees and check-ins and such.
|
| (for the record, just to set some parameters here, he
| didn't physically hurt anyone, but it was still quite
| serious and definitely not something a society would want
| to go un-punished, that's absolutely true)
|
| One imagines the long-term lasting harm to _all of_ :
| victims, families of victims, perpetrators, and families of
| perpetrators; happening over and over in high-crime
| neighborhoods and it's no wonder it's so damn hard to
| improve those areas. That, on top of everything else that's
| often wrong with them. Reducing, not increasing, the "blast
| radius" of crime seems like something you'd focus on if you
| want to reduce crime rates, when stress and poverty are
| causal for crime and stress and poverty are part of the
| effect of same "blast radius".
| plank_time wrote:
| Was your relative a multiple-time offender? If so, maybe
| stronger punishment earlier would have put him on the
| right path sooner.
|
| Look, some people will always be fuck ups. That's the sad
| reality of the life. Some people, no matter how their are
| guided, will always eventually fuck up and ruin all the
| hard work people put into them. They are wired to always
| make poor decisions no matter what. My best friend is
| like this. After 40 years of trying to help him, I accept
| him as he is now with no expectations he will ever get
| better despite decades of trying to help him. I have a
| close relative like that too. If they are protected from
| consequences too early in life, they tend to make larger,
| irrevocable mistakes later in life and then they are
| fucked for a long time.
|
| In SF crime is running rampant now because of a DA that
| refuses to prosecute smaller crimes. It has emboldened
| criminals. Prop 47 has made it so that gangs of thugs
| enter a store, fill their bags with merchandise and run
| out with no repercussions. I witnessed this with my own
| eyes and the manager said they don't even call the cops
| anymore because they won't come. Instead, 15 Walgreens
| have closed their stores in SF in the last few years
| because of it. Criminals are arrested 20+ times in the
| span of a year and they keep getting let go and they are
| free to continue committing crimes and it's getting worse
| and worse.
|
| So punishing criminals matter. Putting them on the right
| path matters but it can't be consequence-free.
| moshmosh wrote:
| I don't think I've been advancing the idea that this
| should have been consequence-free. I just think some
| people (who, fortunately, haven't had much insight into
| "the system") may not be aware how the burden, financial
| and otherwise, for punishment can be in excess of the
| explicit punishment for a crime, and fall on far more
| people than just the offender, in ways that result in
| punishment being _de facto_ much worse for the poor than
| the rich, even when prison time is in some way involved,
| and cause significant harm to families and communities in
| ways that don 't seem particularly useful to the pursuit
| of justice. I find some of the ways these things are
| applied to be poverty-reinforcing, which is a really bad
| idea if you want less crime to happen, rather than more.
|
| (FWIW I haven't downvoted any of your posts)
| userbinator wrote:
| "Our mistake, you get to pay for it" seems like something that
| should be illegal.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Dog searches should require consent or a warrant, IMO. Too many
| cases where the dog is "alerting" based on cues from the handler
| and not an actual presence of any substances.
| [deleted]
| threatofrain wrote:
| What's the point in hacky solutions to salvage the dog as an
| instrument in drug enforcement?
|
| I mean, "yes, I consent to an easily corrupted dog search?"
|
| People dislike black-box ML and "algorithms", but the approach
| seems miles ahead of Woof Woof I Smell Drugs as a Service.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| No, the answer is "no, I do not consent" then they would have
| to get a judge to sign off on a warrant just like if they
| wanted to search your house. And at that point, they don't
| need the dog, they can just search your car.
| tokai wrote:
| Drug sniffing bees should be hard for trainers to misuse.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Dog searches should not be used as evidence unless the dog has
| been certified testing both false positive and false negative
| rates.
| nickysielicki wrote:
| Dog searches should not be used as evidence unless Officer
| Dog can be called to the stand to testify eloquently, in
| english.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| You cannot interrogate the dog to discern why it alerted thus
| its "testimony" should be legally useless. It's not an
| instrument and it cannot be standardized and police
| departments and cops will always be incentivized to use them
| poorly as using it poorly will always garner more hits.
|
| Dog sniff tests like lie detectors should just be forbidden
| from being used in any capacity like every other pseudo
| scientific instrument.
| minikites wrote:
| Who is doing the certification? Why wouldn't they be just as
| corrupt as the police?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| They wouldn't have qualified immunity and their
| certifications would be questionable in court. That does
| not assure perfection, but it would be better than what we
| have now.
| asplake wrote:
| Qui custodiet ipsos custodes
| metiscus wrote:
| Excellent point. For those who don't read latin or want
| to google translate it, the literal latin translation is:
| "Who will guard the guards themselves"
|
| The phrase is more commonly translated as: "Who will
| watch the watchers"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custod
| es%...
| dane-pgp wrote:
| Someone with a good understanding of Latin could use this
| thread as an opportunity to make a Latin joke, by
| translating "Who will watch the watchdogs?" or "Who will
| guard the guard dogs?".
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Forbidding sniff tests from being used as evidence
| themselves or cause for further searches is likeliest to
| result in a just outcome. Sometimes the best answer to
| who watches the watcher is to simplify by eliminating the
| position.
| dheera wrote:
| Agreed. Humans don't even let humans of foreign citizenship
| into law enforcement, so it makes even less sense to let
| _another species_ make decisions about law enforcement.
| minikites wrote:
| From the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans
|
| >He discovered this artifact in the research methodology, wherein
| the horse was responding directly to involuntary cues in the body
| language of the human trainer, who was entirely unaware that he
| was providing such cues.
|
| Drug dogs are an end run around probable cause (as the article
| states). Modern policing is rotten to the core and needs to be
| abolished. An entirely different system needs to replace it, a
| system more focused on helping people instead of terrorizing the
| vulnerable.
| Clubber wrote:
| I have no idea why this was downvoted. Lots of people have made
| livings showing illegal arrests, illegal searches, police lying
| (which is legal but a crime the other way around), coerced
| false confessions, and police brutality on YouTube because
| there's just so much damn material. It's right out of 1984.
| Here's one of many channels on the subject:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMCSd9ZNL0nshOhXwtfIJBA
|
| All this is emboldened by the drug war. If it wasn't for that,
| most of these police departments would be well overstaffed (if
| they aren't considered that already). The US justice system is
| a farce.
| unxontuesnt wrote:
| I don't downvote but I can speculate.
|
| As technology oriented website users, I think it's likely
| most of us are familiar with Joel Spolsky's advice to never
| do a big rewrite [0].
|
| Regardless of the faults of current policing practices, the
| fact is that they represent centuries of judicial,
| legislative, and social work by many thousands of
| individuals. It is dishonest and absurd to believe that such
| a system can be adequately replaced by "something new I dunno
| lol". Cultures and traditions embody solutions to problems
| you don't know exist. "Cultural revolutions" have always and
| everywhere exposed the gaping wounds of the past and revived
| ancient problems that were once solved.
|
| The difficult and tedious work of persistent mutations and
| small improvements is historically the most reliable method
| to improve the lot of humanity. But it's not as exciting or
| sexy as "burn it all down" rhetoric, and people do want to
| get laid.
|
| [0] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-
| should-...
| Clubber wrote:
| >Regardless of the faults of current policing practices,
| the fact is that they represent centuries of judicial,
| legislative, and social work by many thousands of
| individuals.
|
| >But it's not as exciting or sexy as "burn it all down"
| rhetoric
|
| He stated "modern policing," which I would guess is since
| the 1980s and the drug war, then 9/11. All this is fairly
| new, and started within my lifetime. This is "normal" to
| the younger generation, but it's horrifies me.
|
| Some simple fixes that don't require "burning it to the
| ground," but would in fact abolish modern policing:
|
| 1. Abolish qualified immunity. 2. Civil forfeiture requires
| burden of proof on the state. 3. Require at least the
| military's rules of engagement, police rules are very lax.
| (I'm scared, BANG BANG). 4. Require body cams and remove
| ability to turn them or the microphone off. (sensitive info
| can be removed on FOIA, but not court cases). 5. Prosecute
| prosecutors for gross prosecutorial misconduct resulting in
| a wrongful conviction (withholding exonerating evidence).
| 6. Disallow drug dog alerts as evidence of a crime. (this
| has more than been disproven as reliable.) 7. Require
| states to provide equal funding for the public defender's
| office as they do the district attorney's office. (fair
| representation). 8. Require all police departments be 100%
| funded by their municipality rather than self funding
| (ticket quotas, pre-textual stops w/ civil forfeiture). 9.
| National police certification. This keeps away the bad
| "gypsy" cops that get fired / resign for gross misconduct
| from being hired elsewhere. 10. Successful lawsuits against
| the city for police misconduct get taken out of the police
| budget.
|
| There are probably more, but those should "abolish modern
| policing." A civilization has to have a pretty ironclad
| faith in their legal system, otherwise everything will
| collapse.
| unxontuesnt wrote:
| Reasonable suggestions, I think you are probably correct.
|
| I do believe that the zeitgeist that wants to abolish or
| defund the police does genuinely mean that they do not
| want the police to exist in any capacity. They mean
| abolish in the sense that the asylum system was
| abolished.
| Clubber wrote:
| >I do believe that the zeitgeist that wants to abolish or
| defund the police does genuinely mean that they do not
| want the police to exist in any capacity.
|
| I think that idea / narrative makes it easy to circumvent
| any reasonable discussion on the topic in the political /
| media sphere.
|
| I think we're nearly at a critical point, if not already.
| The police were so brazen to beat up and gas news people
| covering protests, _while being filmed doing it._
|
| I'm not a big fan of Vox, but here's a fairly
| comprehensive article (with video) of what went on.
|
| https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/5/31/21276013/police-
| tar...
|
| To use a bit of rhetoric, this doesn't look like
| policing, this looks like occupation.
| miesman wrote:
| Who's a good boy!
| benatkin wrote:
| More like a "good old boy".
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/good_old_boy#Noun
| leephillips wrote:
| This is something any US citizen should be concerned about, if
| not outraged. There is no 4th amendment if a cop can just have a
| dog with him, or say "I smelled weed", etc. The cops even joke
| about it, referring to the dogs as "probable cause on four legs".
| The root problem is credulous or complicit judges who let this
| evidence be introduced. We need them to throw out these cases.
| namelessoracle wrote:
| The judge issue is understated. Local judges who can throw out
| this evidence get elected without challenge and often by
| relatively small numbers of voters. Judges are often voted in
| during an off season so voter turnout is tiny. But i used to
| joke that if about 50 percent of a local university turned up
| to vote for a judge they could easily de facto make marijuana
| legal in their area.
| samatman wrote:
| It's no joke!
|
| Ann Arbor Michigan had the most liberal cannabis laws in the
| United States for a couple decades running, it was a $5 fine
| for personal use quantities.
|
| In the late 80s (IIRC) a Republican on the city council tried
| to change this, campaign promise or something. The council
| said "hmm, yeah, it costs us more to process this paperwork
| than we get in fines" and raised it to $20 or $25.
| plank_time wrote:
| There needs to be accountability. If a dog is poor at sniffing
| drugs, it needs to be taken out of service. I don't know what
| anyone hasn't thought about that except because everyone who
| decides on these processes don't care.
| ineedasername wrote:
| The dog got a reward when it signaled the presence of drugs.
| (before an actual search to confirm the dog's signal) That seems
| like a great way to train a dog to always signal the presence of
| drugs.
| steve_g wrote:
| Anyone who knows anything about dogs would say that drug-
| sniffing dogs are a constitutional nightmare. They're basically
| a rubber-stamp. Dogs want to please their handlers. If the
| handler wants the dog to alert, the dog will alert. The
| presence or absence of drugs isn't relevant to the dog.
| moate wrote:
| Drug K-9 units are right up there with polygraph tests in the
| "fake nonsense without enough science involved and a high-
| degree of abusability".
| ineedasername wrote:
| Yes. I train my dogs to give me its paw when I show it a
| cookie and say "paw". It never takes long for them to just
| sit down and start waiving their paw around as soon as I pull
| out the cookie. Or rushing to the door when I get home and
| doing the same thing even when I didn't present a dog treat.
| meowface wrote:
| Do you have a source on this, and on how common it is? I
| certainly wouldn't be surprised at all if it's true, but I'm
| curious about actual studies.
| ineedasername wrote:
| The article for this post is a pretty good source: 100%
| rate for the dog indicating the presence of drugs is pretty
| much a rubber stamp.
| amalcon wrote:
| It's tricky because, while dogs can understand fairly complex
| vocabulary, their ability to reason abstractly about events is
| less developed. If the dog alerts, you spend two minutes
| searching, and then you reward the dog, it will have trouble
| connecting the reward to the alert.
|
| The obvious solution is to train the dog to search things that
| you know have drugs (or don't) because the trainer set it up
| that way. You'll need to then repeat this training often, and
| not always in the same environment. If you don't, eventually
| the dog will figure out that it will always be rewarded for
| alerting in the field.
|
| The problem with _this_ , of course, is that it's expensive and
| cumbersome to do. You need to set up cars/bags/lockers/etc with
| and without drugs in them in a variety of locations, secure
| them (lest actual criminals steal the drugs), and bring the
| dogs to them (lots of time out of the handler's day). Also,
| even if you do this, you'll still get false positives: dogs are
| living animals, not machines.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Or you just reward the dog when you put it back in the police
| vehicle whether it indicated the presence of drugs.
| elif wrote:
| I think the condititoning is more like "train a dog to signal
| the presence of drugs _when the officer wants there to be
| drugs_"
|
| At least that's what happened when I was K9 nonconsent
| searched.
|
| The dog didn't signal for 4 laps and then the handler looked at
| him like i look at my dog when he eats cat food. Of course the
| dog then sat.
| JTbane wrote:
| Even more troubling is this sort of thing could be grounds for
| asset forfeiture- in which you have to prove to a judge your
| property wasn't used in a crime to get it back.
| nyhc99 wrote:
| How do we the people fight these drug dog abuses? Politicians
| generally aren't interested in touching something like this. I'd
| love to put some money to work on the issue. Is there a
| foundation dedicated to suing police departments? Is that even a
| viable avenue to make a change?
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