I was watching “America’s Port” tonight and saw a preview where the port police were using drug-sniffing dogs to detect illegal drugs being brought in by tourists returning to the states from a cruise ship. The handlers were bragging about how their dogs could find anything.
I understand that a dog has a very good sense of smell, and these dogs are specially trained for the job, but I am wondering exactly what they are smelling. I know this show featured tourists, and not professional drug smugglers, but I know even the various tricks employed by pros are often not enough to avoid detection.
So my question is; what are the dogs detecting? Is it that the packaging the smugglers are using is not sufficiently non-porus (air-tight) that the dogs can smell the drugs through all the sealing and packaging - or are the dogs detecting traces of the drugs on the outside of the packaging that was left there by the smugglers because they could not keep the outside clean enough during packing?
Both. Many drugs are produced with volatile chemicals that remain in the drugs, and evaporate out. These volatiles will migrate through plastics - and they carry some molecules of the drug with them. And a sniffer dogs nose is really, really sensitive. I suspect that the dog is mainly detecting the solvents - the drugs don’t actually exist without them. Plus anything on the outside will contribute, and it does not need to be much due to the aforementioned sensitivity. And a package wrapped up tight with masking/duct tape will have it’s own specific smell which should attract the attention of a drug dog - they can sniff out pirate DVDs
A couple of sniffer dogs were recently on loan to Kuala Lumpur. They specifically looked for pirate DVDs. They were so good that a price was put on their heads! (They returned to the US unscathed.)
The dogs always look so cute, but I’m never sure if it’s proper to give them a little pat on the head.
But awfully cute ones. They always look like they’re ready to play with you.
A story about Lucky and Flo, those two I mentioned that were on loan to Malaysia, is here. They were so successful at finding pirate DVDs that they received a hero’s farewell.
Apparently they are also incredibly fallible. The NSW Ombudsman’s review of the use of sniffer dogs concluded amongst other things:
Overwhelmingly, the use of drug detection dogs has led to public searches of individuals in which no drugs were found, or to the detection of (mostly young) adults in possession of very small amounts of cannabis for personal use.
Also:
Rate of finding drugs
Almost all persons indicated by a drug detection dog were subsequently searched by police. This is in accordance with police policy which states that an indication by a drug detection dog gives police reasonable suspicion to search a person. Prohibited drugs were only located in 26% of the searches following an indication. That is, almost three-quarters of all indications did not result in the location of prohibited drugs.
The rate of finding drugs varied from dog to dog, ranging from 7% (of all indications) to 56%. Six of the 17 dogs utilised during the review period had a rate of finding drugs higher than the overall average of 26%. However, a majority (11) of dogs had a rate of finding drugs lower than the overall average.
When I worked for T.S.A., the U.S. Customs had this one little dog that went around and sniffed for fruits, vegetables and plants. I asked how they trained him and he said that he wouldn’t go into details, but the dog was specifically trained to sniff for soil and dirt inside of bags and not so much the plants and fruits themselves. Weird, but it makes logical sense I guess, especially since fruits, veggies and plants mostly grow in…well…soil…
About 15 years ago, they also trained Beagles in Hawaii to sniff the wheel wells of incoming planes from places like Guam for I think it was the brown tree snake. Hawaii is super-paranoid about snakes and with good reason, because brown tree snakes (I think that’s the snake) on Guam have eaten all the birds! The snakes often climb up into the wheel wells of planes, then slither away after landing someplace new.
This makes me suspicious of the whole process. I have no cite, but isn’t a very large percentage of American paper money tainted with cocaine residue? It seems as though unless you actually find a prosecutable quantity of illegal narcotics, such an arrest would violate Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Another question I have is about the explosive sniffing apparatus used by the TSA at airports. Are they also used to detect illegal drugs?
Part of the problem is that they can be too good. They might sniff out the scent of drugs on you because the person sitting next to you was smuggling drugs. Even though the dog had accurately detected drugs, it would look like a false detection when you’re searched.
Offhand, I’d say no. The training of the dogs is a matter of public record and is admissable in court. If a defense lawyer could show that a dog was trained to bark on command rather than when it detected rugs, he could have the probable cause overruled and any subsequent evidence thrown out.
Obviously there could be clandestine training that is unrecorded but most police departments aren’t going to take that kind of risk. They’ve got a canine system set up that is working. They don’t want anyone ruining its credibility just to make a few false arrests.
So in a majority of the cases, the person admitted some contact with cannabis. Contact was denied by a fairly high percentage of people, but it can be expected that many people who were actually in contact would deny this contact to the police. It’s not that the dog is failing badly, its look more like this method does not discriminate between residual odor and odor from drugs in the person’s current possession.
That is less of an issue of the dogs, than the policy of using an undiscriminating tool.