Yeah, 'cause usually he’s just drunk.
You’d be surprised. The right kind of sedative will only make your dog sleep, and not act all that different once he awakens. And even if you do notice the difference, are you more likely to think the dog was drugged, or that it has some sort of medical problem? Or ate something bad for it? Or is just being weird?
Shoot it with a drugged dart like they do on those nature shows
Wouldn’t it just be easier to get a real warrant instead of going through all that hassle?
. . . and of course I misread the OP, thinking a “sneak and peek” was just some dopey cop running up to the window for a peep show. :smack:
Tripler
I stand corrected.
Cops do not have to ‘play fair’ with criminals. There are lots of examples of this that have been upheld by courts.
Cops can violate traffic laws when chasing a suspect. Cops can set up a fake fence operation, and then invite all their suppliers to a party, and arrest them. Cops can pretend to be lottery prize officials, or delivery drivers, or whatever to serve an arrest warrant on someone. And one asked about frequently here on the Straight Dope – cops can pretend to be johns or dope buyers to catch prostitutes or drug dealers, and no, they do not have to tell the truth if you ask them if they are a cop. And cops can lie when interrogating a suspect, telling him that his buddy is confessing, and blaming everything on him. So this is just another version of cops fooling criminals.
There are limits: entrapment, planting evidence, denying legal representation, physical beatings, all those will get the cop in trouble, and probably lose the case in court. But beiing smart enough to fool the criminals? That’s not illegal, even if it seems unfair to you.
Smart cops will have arranged with the gas company to back up their story. But if they don’t, and you check up on them, then your choices are to believe that this might have been a sneaky cop raid, or to believe that the gas company is so screwed up that their office doesn’t even know about possible gas leaks discovered out in the field. I’d think either one might be possible.
Sure. It’s on your property. You could sell it on Craigslist, and keep the money. You could even call the police to report it, and watch as they pretend to investigate it.
(A few years ago, a listening device was found in the light fixture of a City Council Members’ office in City Hall. They never did find out who put that there, just that it had been there for years, and had long since died.)
No, because the evidence isn’t there yet.
You get a regular warrant when you believe there is evidence of a crime present in the house. In these cases, they are planting a listening device to get the evidence when they overhear the criminals make incriminating statements.
I live out in the countryside in the ass end of nowhere, and we do not have gas, We also pump our own water, and deal with a guy to empty the septic tank. I know everybody in the town government, which is the beauty and annoyance of a town of 2500 people in the ass end of nowhere. By name, and by sight.
It works! The gas company lady did this with our guard dog akita. Apparently the 'keeter wants to play with her when she comes over to read the meter.
That might work if the cops were certain I was going to be gone for 8-12 hours or something. Otherwise, I don’t make a habit of leaving poisons around and if I noticed sluggish or confused or fearful or aggressive behavior in my dog I would immediately alert to it.
Add to that, that if I were involved in some big criminal activity I’m sure I’d be hyper alert to my dog’s behavior. Dogs are cute and affectionate and all, but IMHO humans and dogs have evolved to work together, and a dog in many ways is simply an extension of a human’s senses. If you are in tune with your dog, their superior senses become an extension of your own.
I can buy that a detective would spend time giving the dog treats and win its trust, but shooting a dog with a tranq gun leaves me dubious. In some jurisdictions, cops are not trained, qualified, or authorized to obtain and use tranquilizers. You can bet my lawyer would be all over that. There is a real risk of killing a dog with tranquilizers, and I"d love for the cops and the judge who issued the warrant to explain that to my lawyer and the jury.
We’re not talking about “criminals,” we’re talking about suspects. (Innocent until proven guilty, remember?)
And yes, cops do have to play fair inasmuch as they would have to obtain a warrant before engaging in this sort of search. A warrant means adducing some evidence supporting reasonable suspicion of illegal activity.
Having lawfully obtained the warrant, can they use trickery to get the suspect out of the house? Yes.
But if there isn’t evidence, how are sneak-n-peek warrants even Constitutional? It seems utterly wrong that police/federal agents can suspect someone of illegal activity, sneak in their house when they’re not there and snoop for evidence that can in turn lead to an actual warrant, where they’d go in and seize the evidence.
But you can only do a sneak and peek if you already have a warrant. And a sneak and peek warrant is much harder to get than a regular old “knock on the door we’re here to search your house” warrant. So you can’t sneak onto the property and plant a bug because you hope to get enough evidence to justify a warrant.
If the homeowners never leave the house, then the cops can’t sneak onto the property to plant a bug, and will have to gather evidence against you in another way. It’s often very difficult for the cops to gather evidence against career criminals, and if you’ve arranged your life to make it harder for the cops to gather evidence against you then they’re going to have a harder time gathering evidence against you.
That doesn’t make a lot of sense. If the warrant to sneak into someone’s house and look for evidence is harder to get than the one to knock on the door and be able to seize evidence, why even bother? Do you have sources that say what kind of proof is required before getting a sneak/peek warrant vs a normal warrant?
As I said, they need a warrant to sneak in. The sneak and peek isn’t to look for evidence that would allow them make a public search, it’s usually to plant surveillance equipment.
They have to have enough evidence to convince a Judge that they are justified in gathering more evidence. But they can’t just plant bugs willy-nilly, they need to convince the judge first. If they think Tony S has bags of cocaine at his house, they don’t sneak in to check first and get a regular warrant if they find coke, they get a regular old warrant and knock on the door and search the house.
They don’t have to prove that there’s coke at the house to get a warrant to search the house, they have to show the judge they have good reason to believe they’ll find coke. Like, say, an informant told them that Tony S has bags of coke lying around. Or some other tangible reason. Not just a suspicion.
They’d only get a sneak and peek if they thought they wouldn’t find bags of coke lying around, despite being pretty sure that Tony is a drug kingpin. The sneak and peek is for when they can convince a judge that Tony is a coke dealer, but he’s careful enough that he won’t have bags of coke lying around, and so they need more evidence to prove that Tony is a coke dealer.