Get your surprised faces ready:
The Supreme Court had another opportunity to address the problem in the 2013′s Florida v. Harris. At issue in that case was whether mere certification could be enough to establish a drug dog’s reliability, or if, as the defendant argued, a judge should also consider a dog’s record in the field before ruling on the legality of a search based on the dog’s alert. In a unanimous decision, the court rejected the defendant’s argument. If a dog is certified to detect narcotics, the court ruled, its roadside alerts are sufficient to establish probable cause for a search.
Importantly, the court put no qualifiers on how reputable the certifying organization should be, or whether certification should ensure that the dog has been trained to disregard its innate desire to please its handler. The court also didn’t seem concerned with the fact that there are incentives for certifying organizations to please its customers — which, of course, are police departments. The court seemed incurious about important matters such as how often does the certification organization fail a K-9 team? Who determines whether the K-9 unit passes?
A drug dog’s actual performance in the field is a far better indication of its accuracy than whether it passed a controlled test administered by a certification group. But the Supreme Court justices just didn’t get it. During oral arguments, Justice Antonin Scalia seemed perplexed as to why a police department would want a dog prone to false alerts. “Why would a police department want to use an incompetent dog?” he asked the public defender who argued the case. “What incentive is there for a police department?”
Another brick in the wall of evidence of this scumbag also being dumb as a fuckin’ ox.
