Support Your Local Police

An previously unknown benefit of police bodycams has been demonstrated, they show extensive prompting by K-9 officers to generate a pretext for searches.

We've known this for years, it's called the Clever Hans Effect, where the handlers of animals unconsciously cue their animals.

Of course, in this case, this is deliberate cuing of the animals, which is, or should be, a crime:

For decades, American courts have had to take it on faith that drug-sniffing dogs were impartial. Testimony by a dog's handler, along with training records and credentialing by a local K-9 organization, were usually enough. But the recent spread of body cameras now threatens to upend that faith.

A newly filed federal lawsuit in Texas shows cameras' potential to undermine K-9 unit legitimacy. Houston resident Alek Schott accuses Bexar County Sheriff's deputy Joel Babb of pulling him over on Interstate 35 on false pretenses, and then, when he refused to give permission to search his pickup truck, he says K-9 unit deputy Martin A. Molina III prompted his dog to "alert" to the scent of drugs.

Historically, that claim would have been nearly impossible to prove. But in this case, Schott requested and received the officers' body camera footage, giving him almost the same view the K-9 handler had — including the moment the handler's right hand made a gesture toward the attentive dog, which then jumped up on the pickup's door.

“It's clear to me that he's telling the dog to alert,” Schott says. “I thought, 'These guys are trying to destroy my life.'“

………

That's long been a nagging doubt about drug-sniffing dogs: that handlers might influence them to alert to a scent that may not be there. Research has shown handlers may not even realize they're doing it. Some K-9 trainers have called for “double-blind” testing of the dogs, in which the location and existence of test drugs are randomized, unknown even to the dog's handler. But that approach has been slow to catch on, and is often met with hostility. 

We can talk about double blind tests, or other techniques to ameliorate criminal conspiracies by police officers to suborn people's civil rights, but they won't work.

The police will continue to do this until there is a credible threat of prosecution and conviction for these behaviors.

Anything else will be ineffective at preventing this, because between dirty cops, the police unions that support them, and the (largely elected) judges who want to portray themselves as tough on crime, training and procedures will be meaningless.