A cop asks to search your car. You say “no”. He calls the K-9 unit because he’s suspicious or whatever. You sit on the side of the road waiting for the K-9 to arrive. When it does, the guy walks the dog around the car with the dog.
[GQs] How do I know whether or not the dog actually indicates contraband? Isn’t it something like when the dog sits down that means it is indicating? How could I contest this in court? What is to prevent a vindictive cop from just saying that the dog found something and then going ahead with the search? On a related idea, if you don’t consent to a search, what is to prevent the cop from suddenly “smelling” marijuana? Is it actually true that a clever cop can search you one way or the other? [/GQs]
They can search you anytime they want. Unless you are at your place of residence. At least you can not kill anyone with your house.
As for the K-9 thing. I saw a demonstration a while back where they had put some pot in a peanut butter container, and hid it under the carburetor cap - older car - and the dog picked it right up. It was amazing. One safety tip, don’t ever EVER try and pet a K-9 unit dog. Ever.
Please go here, Phlosphr, because you continue to spread misinformation in General Questions.
Jayrot, it all depends on how the K-9 dog was trained, but generally speaking, they will intensely sniff and possibly bark sharply as indicators of contraband. If the drugs are in a container, or out of reach, they will also tend to scratch at the item and attempt to get at it. I’ve heard some that are trained to sit when indicating, but that is usually for bomb and explosive detection dogs rather than drug dogs. Unless the dog actually finds contraband and you get arrested, there is not a whole lot of chance you will have to “contest” it in court. If the dog hits, and it is contraband, it seems pretty logical that the hit was correct. It would do your vindictive officer no good to say that the dog indicated when it didn’t because it is unlikely they would find contraband. It’s a form of the proof is in the pudding.
I guess nothing other than the fact the officer isn’t going to risk the lawsuits and a possible loss of his job to harrass you if he didn’t really smell marijuana. And it’s not a question of whether a police officer can search you, of course he CAN, but a question of the consequences of the search. If he didn’t have your consent or probable cause, or a myriad of other exceptions to searching you or your car, the evidence should not be used against you. In addition, he opens himself up to potential civil suits for doing so.
No input for you on the OP, to expand on Hamlet’s remarks, different dogs are trained to react to their trigger smells in two different ways: active and passive.
The active response is to claw and bark. This is used for dogs that inspect checked luggage, cargo, etc.
The passive response is to sit. This is used for dogs that interact with the public (to avoid panicking or injuring people), or if the dogs might be harmed by what they’re sniffing for, as with explosives.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Jayrot *
A cop asks to search your car. You say “no”. He calls the K-9 unit because he’s suspicious or whatever. You sit on the side of the road waiting for the K-9 to arrive. When it does, the guy walks the dog around the car with the dog.
Different dogs will be trained in different ways, but it’s really irrelevant - if the dog indicates something, then your consent is not needed so there’s no reason to say ‘OK, you can search now since the dog obviously found something’. To contest whether the dog found something in court, you’d check what the police dog training regimen teaches the dogs to do, check figures on the accuracy of this kind of search, etc. In practical terms, of course, you probably are either going to plead out of the case or you’re going to spring for/have provided a lawyer and expert witness on the topic.
The fact that he’s going to have to lie on the report about what the dog did, and that you and other witnesses are going to contest his description of what the dog did, that he’s risking his career for a search that might not turn up anything and might get thrown out of court anyway, and that if he’s willing to do it now it’s probably not the only time he’s done/going to do it and so will leave evidence.
It is actually true that a clever non-cop can search you one way or the other; a non-cop can come to your house and pose as an officer with a warrant, break in when you’re not there, or stick a gun to your head while he searches. The problem, of course, is that he’d have to break the law to do it. Similarly, a cop can break the law and search you without probable cause, but that involves breaking the law. Lying under oath once will not get detected, but continually ‘smelling marijuana’ for no reason is going to result in numerous complaints against him, searches being thrown out because of his track record, and possibly criminal charges. While a cop can break the law more easily than a private citizen because of his position, a cop can’t just ignore the law outside of pathologically broken police departments (like LA Rampart Division, for example, and they did eventually get caught).