I don't normally go with the HuffPo, but in this case, it's an important legal issue
In the course of reporting on the traffic stop of Terrance Huff, HuffPost was able to obtain the reports of an Illinois State Police K-9 unit over an 11-month period in 2007 and 2008. An analysis of those reports shows that only 25.7 percent of the drug dog "alerts" resulted in police finding a measurable quantity of illicit drugs. Just 13 percent resulted in the recovery of more than 10 grams of marijuana, generally considered an amount for personal use, and 10.4 percent turned up enough drugs to charge the motorists or their passengers with at least one felony.As I've noted before, dogs are awfully anxious to please their owners, and if a policeman indicates, even unconsciously, that he expects to find drugs, a dog is very likely to respond as if it has found them. I imagine cops could achieve as good a record without the dog if they were allowed to search the people "they had a hunch about". And save on dog food.
It's time for judges to start looking on dog sniffing and judging critically whether it constitutes probably cause. If a cop's "hunch" isn't good enough, his hunch filtered through a canine anxious to please it's trainer shouldn't be either. Maybe drug dogs need certification (based on finding drugs in a double blind test), and records of accuracy. Then a dog with a rating below a certain level would not be used. This would also eliminate trainers that produce with a high rate of false positives.
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