'False Positives' Suggest Police Exploit Canines to Justify Searches

Submitted by dguard on
A study of "false positives" involving drug-sniffing police dogs suggests some police forces may be using canines to do an end-run around constitutional protections against search and seizure, and may be profiling racial minorities in the process. A survey of primarily suburban police departments in Illinois, carried out by the Chicago Tribune, found that 56 percent of all police searches triggered by a drug-sniffing dog turned nothing up. But, perhaps tellingly, that number jumped to 73 percent when the search involved a Latino subject -- meaning that nearly three-quarters of all dog alerts on Latinos turned up no contraband.

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Source URL: https://stopthedrugwar.org/news/2011/jan/06/false_positives_suggest_police_e