That depends both on the court and whether or not a dog should actually be considered an officer. The only rationale that I’ve heard for this practice is to help avoid loss of the dogs to aggressive criminals who don’t care to add “murder of a police officer” to their sheet when they shoot a pursuing attack k-9.
Yes, however, they are not usually beat cops on patrol. They are a specialty resource sent to respond to situations where k-9 is needed for support.
I the normal “officer’s senses” rules are intended to prevent a situation where an officer, in the legal performance of his duty, is required to ignore the things he senses that indicate a criminal violation. Once you add tools, like sniffing devices/dogs, IR sensors, periscopes, ladders, I think we’re no longer talking about things that the officer is going to notice during the performance of his duty. It’s now a targeted search.
I invite an officer into my home to discuss an issue, he is not allowed to open drawers or search my computer while I make us tea. However, he is not required to forget that he saw a big old bong on my coffee table.
Can officers bring in Ground Penetrating Radar or a Cadaver Dog and search my whole property without a warrant?
You can get away with the vehicle search because the dog is on public property, and the car owner has no rights whatsoever over the roadside. I think you inherently need my permission (or a warrant) to conduct a search while you are on my property.
That’s not quite right. The rule is they aren’t invasive because they can only detect the presence of contraband - as in, there is no other inference (that needs to worry the “sniffee”, anyway) from an alert.
I gotta go with the train of thought of why is the dog at the front door if there is not an intention to search? For me (IANAL) this presumption of a search is enough to say 4th Amendment violation. If you think you need a dog at the front door, get a warrant.
That’s a circular argument. You can’t say “bringing a dog to the front door means there is an intent to search” until you establish that use of the dog is a search.
Why is the dog there? If there is an answer other than “To see if there are drugs inside.” then it’s not a search. If the answer is, “If they let us in we can perform a consensual search.” then leave the dog in the car or at least back 20 feet.
If the dog needs to be by the door so that if they consent to the search they are not flushing their stash 
before the dog gets there then I say that’s warrant territory.
Did you read the amicus brief? (Again, it’s linked in Post #55.) As I read it, this is precisely the argument they’re making (see section I.B). That is, they’re saying the Supreme Court has assumed what you say, but the Court was wrong, the issue wasn’t properly presented in the prior cases and, so, should be decided in this one. IOW, I agree that what you say is a fair reading of the existing case law (on which I based Post #25), but the amicus brief is challenging those cases
You know I love you, but this is why people hate lawyers.
How do we do that but through the use of logic to win a case that establishes the principle? Torturing prior case law is just silly when we are talking about a new technology, or a novel implementation of an existing one. The use/implementation should be considered on its own merits before use, rather than after the fact. That is a flaw in the system; but still, discussing this necessitates some novel thought here.
It’s not as if all the police are just bringing their personal pets along with them on the beat. Or even like every officer has a trained k-9 along for the ride every shift. K-9 are used for very specific purposes usually drug/explosive detection, or fugitive/missing person/body recovery. That is it. Without those circumstances being present there is not a need for a k-9 unit to be called out. Most departments only have a few dogs at their disposal, and loads of them don’t have any at all. Therefore we have established, logically at least, that k-9 are NOT standard issue, and NOT part of normal police procedures outside of specific, presumed circumstances. They are brought in when OUR senses are insufficient to determine the presence of specific targets. That is obviously a search beyond Officer Friendly simply noticing something as he’s walking about. That alone should be enough to be done with this point, but add to the fact that the police really have no legitimate business being around private property if they aren’t responding to a call, or have noticed something suspicious enough to warrant probable cause and it puts us back into “search” territory again.
Would you be offended if your neighbor came over, entered your home, and came upstairs to see what kind of reading material you keep next to the upstairs toilet?
I would. And so would most people, I think. So that’s an example of an expectation of privacy that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable.
Would you be offended if your neighbor took his dog for a walk and came up and knocked on your door? I would not, and I don’t think most people would either.
I would certainly be offended if said neighbor spent a crapload of money training said “pet” to sniff out drugs, and said neighbor only took the “pet” out to visit “friends” he suspected of using drugs, leaving the “pet” at home when he visited other friends.
The trained drug-sniffing dog is NOT a “pet”, and any police officer will tell you the same thing. It is a tool to be used for a specific purpose.
IANAL, but I was thinking along these lines. Many of the responses here seem to take for granted that the sniff IS a search, and then go on to opine as to whether that search was legal or not.
Let’s say a drug dog sniffs and reacts positively to something at an airport. Has it been legally determined whether the sniff in and of itself is a search, or is it legally justifiable grounds for a subsequent search?
I don’t see any way that this example could be construed any differently than one in a public place. So really (IMO) the question should be, by what right the police had to transport that drug sniffing dog to their door?
I have one question, the answer to which might change my opinion. Will the dog “automatically” react upon sniffing drugs, or does a handler have to give a command equivalent to an “on” switch? If under normal circumstances the dog would stay idle whether or not it smelled drugs, is a different case than whether the officer commanded the sniff and reaction.
I’m not saying the dog visit isn’t a search. I’m saying that Saint Cad’s argument doesn’t work, because he (?) is assuming that it is.
Keep in mind that a sniff is not the first thing the police will try to confirm if somebody is operating a grow house. They’ll pull utility bills to see if the residents are using large amounts of electricity (lamps in a grow house require a noticeably higher amount of juice than the average residential home), watch the house to see who comes and goes, stuff like that.
Frankly, if I were suspected of growing, I might prefer it if the cops just showed up with a dog and left him sniff the door. It’s less intrusive than having them go through my bills and watch me coming and going.
First I would ask, does mere suspicion give the police the right to search your home? I’m guessing that you would answer “no” given your comments about other evidence the police could look at.
But – do we know that the police did in fact look at such other evidence in this case? There was nothing to suggest it in the OP link.
But if they have already
Then they already have enough probable cause to get a warrant.
Bricker
How I treat my neighbor’s dog is an entirely different question then how I may choose to treat a Police Officer’s dog - as there is no expectation that what a neighbor’s dog smells could be used against me in a court of law or even as an aggervation.
But if a drug dog is a tool like a gun or flashlight, doesn’t an officer have a right to carry his tools along with him wherever he himself has a right to be?
He can carry a stethoscope if he wants to. I draw the line at him using the thing on my door.
Go ahead, bring your puppy along, just don’t use the damn thing to search my house without my permission, or a warrant.
This goes back to a question I asked a few posts back. “Will the dog “automatically” react upon sniffing drugs, or does a handler have to give a command equivalent to an “on” switch? If under normal circumstances the dog would stay idle whether or not it smelled drugs, is a different case than whether the officer commanded the sniff and reaction.”
Certainly not, which brings us back to the question of whether the sniff is a search.
Maybe, maybe not. If that’s all they have, in fact, they probably don’t have probable cause.
It doesn’t realy matter. If the former, it is an instrument/tool that is always on, and the police officer deliberately brought that instrument/tool to my door. If the latter, then the instant the police officer turns that instrument/tool “on” she/he has stepped beyond the “sniff test”.
The legal question posed by the OP fits into a web of longstanding law on related subjects. For example, a key element of Fourth Amendment law is examination of your expectation of privacy, and the notion that if something is open to the view of your neighbor then the police get to take a look too.
You may disagree with that more fundamental principle; I might even join you in that disagreement. But when we’re talking about the legal question concerning dog sniffs, we’re assuming those background principles. So when **Bricker **talks about your neighbor coming onto your porch, he is identifying the relevant question under current Fourth Amendment law.
I’m not saying the discussion in this thread should be constrained by what the Court has already decided. If you want to contend that we should toss out all the Fourth Amendment jurisprudence and start from scratch, I’m with you brother. I’m just saying to understand what the various lawyers are saying, you have to appreciate that we’re taking certain previously-established principles for granted.
Taking those principles for granted, I think those who believe these dog sniffs ought to require a warrant are on their highest ground when they argue that a random (or worse, disparately discriminatory) program of taking dogs to houses violates the Fourth Amendment as a kind of “dragnet” search. That issue, at least, is not entirely foreclosed by existing precedent.