A Class Gift
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:53 AM

Remember when previous graduating classes would donate a plaque or a water fountain or a bench to their old high school? How passe'. Southington High School in Connecticut has received a magic wand, that when waved in the vicinity of a student, reveals whether the potential miscreant has imbibed alcohol. The wand, the linked article notes, can be used for random tests!

Wand-like mechanisms are referred to as passive alcohol sensors. They are so passive that you can be tested for alcohol without even knowing that you are being tested. I am not sure if our Supreme Court will go along with that, however -- they seem to prefer big dogs providing more active searches for contraband. (For drugs, the accuracy of such dogs lends new meaning to the phrase "random search".) Here's a ten-page pdf that argues that such passive alcohol searches are constitutional when used in the context of traffic stops. And here is a touching tale about the use of drug-sniffing dogs in a Florida school district.

Labels: alcohol, dogs, search, teens

 
Keystone Canine Cops
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 8:52 PM

Can't really blame the dogs this time, though. Seems that they were trained to find, er, talcum powder. In Australia, a pouch of the powder was accidentally labelled as cocaine, and used in sniffer dog training. Yes, a dog "alert" now constitutes probable cause to search you for that fresh, just-showered feeling.

Thanks to a friend of Vice Squad for the pointer; I see that Ken at Crim Law was on top of this one, too.

Labels: Australia, cocaine, dogs, search

 
What, No Guns Drawn?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 8:00 AM

A middle school in Pennsylvania was placed in "lockdown" at 2PM on Tuesday:

Students were kept in their classrooms while three dogs searched the building, looking for marijuana, cocaine, crack, amphetamines, heroin and ecstasy.

The dogs were claimed to have "alerted" on 31 lockers -- this school might be the very fulcrum of the global trade in illegal drugs. So the authorities padlocked the highly suspicious lockers (along with neighboring ones), then went about securing a search warrant. It isn't clear why they didn't follow their own policy and just open the lockers and look inside, but one gets the suspicion (or at least I get the suspicion) that they were hoping to lay some heavy criminal charges on the student druggies -- charges that might have been compromised by having school officials muck about in a bunch of lockers. Four hours later, the search warrant dutifully was issued and arrived -- dog sniffs establish probable cause, of course; come to think of it, not just probable cause, but near certain guilt. If it's a dog's alert versus some kid's word, or even my own eyes, I'll go with the dog every time. But before they executed the search pursuant to the warrant, they let the kids out of school -- hey, what sort of half-hearted "lockdown" was this? -- so that the youthful scholars could see whose lockers had fallen afoul of the canine coppers. Oh yeah, no drugs were found. Zero-for-thirty-one. Better days ahead, drug sniffing pooches. Naturally, officials, parents, and even some students, with some exceptions, are rushing to express their support for this first-rate operation. Among the exceptions, however, are some sensible police.

Add Mechanicsburg Area Middle School to the honor roll that includes such stalwarts as Stratford High and Milford High.

Thanks to Ken at Crim Law for the pointer; Ken got the word from Christopher Coyle.

Update: Though it is obvious, I just want to mention that the wrongheadedness of this operation is independent of the fact that no drugs were found (though that should be more reason to question the efficacy of dog sniffs); as in the other school cases, these over-the-top tactics wouldn't be salvaged by having a few illegal drugs show up in one or two lockers.

Labels: dogs, drugs, search, teens

 
The Good News in the Dog-Sniff Case
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 2:09 PM

Well, missing nearly two weeks of blogospheric activity is proving irremediable. So much has happened in the vice policy world that I simply can't do it justice. I'll just mention in the next few days a few happenings that have now caught my attention. First, the dog sniff case.

On the surface, and maybe even deeper down, it looks as if the Supreme Court has dealt the Fourth Amendment another drug-related setback. Orin Kerr of the Volokh Conspiracy tells more. If you are not worried about the outcome in this case, Ken Lammers of Crim Law helps explain why you should be.

But here's the good news, as I see it: look at the precise holding: "A dog sniff conducted during a concededly lawful traffic stop that reveals no information other than the location of a substance that no individual has any right to possess does not violate the Fourth Amendment." Specifically, "that no individual has any right to possess" -- what could that mean? There are some federally-licensed and supplied medical marijuana patients in the US! So even marijuana does not seem to fit within the holding, although it was a marijuana bust. But more specifically, any drug with an accepted research or medical use -- cocaine, or ecstasy, for instance -- could be distinguished. As it reads, the holding specifically applies only to schedule 1 drugs that are not licensed for research purposes. So it may be that there is some hope that this case will not lead to carte blanche for unwarranted dog sniffs.

Incidentally, a query to legal types: the Chief Justice, we are told, "took no part in the decision of this case". Now does this mean that Justice Stevens assigned the authorship of the opinion of the Court? And is it possible that he voted with the majority for strategic purposes, so that he could assign the opinion to himself, and then produce a not very well-argued, and possibly quite narrow decision? Oh no, I have become a conspiracy theorist! I did hear that one of the side effects of that anti-malarial medicine I was taking in Senegal was paranoia.

Even if there is no good news here, and the Supremes have concluded such unwarranted sniffs are not unconstitutional, that's not the end of the story. Now is the time for the Illinois State legislature to step into the breach, and to make it illegal to use a dog sniff absent reasonable suspicion or some tougher standard.

Labels: dogs, drugs, search, Supreme Court

 
Lazy Link-Based Post
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 2:59 PM

(1) Ken Lammers at Crim Law doesn't think that the Supreme Court will recognize dog sniffs as a "search". He also manages to use the word "thaumaturgic," which I had to look up. Pete at Drug WarRant is pessimistic about the outcome of the sniff case, too.

(2) Via The Agitator, we learn of Jacob Sullum's piece at Hit and Run exposing the DEA's backtracking from its own advice to doctors about pain treatment. Seems like following their old advice might have left docs open to, oh, DEA prosecutions and long jail sentences. This whole DEA idea is working out so well that I think we ought to extend it to other commodities. How about a Cabbage Enforcement Administration?

(3) Libby at Last One Speaks has the word on an extremely dangerous vice criminal, thankfully to be held in custody more-or-less permanently. Pete at Drug WarRant notes that case, too, as well as that of another vicious miscreant held only for a couple of years, alas, though some extra-judicial abuse also was inflicted. This leniency is sure to lead to a crime wave.

(4) It looks like crack cocaine is losing out to heroin as the analogy used to demonize somethin' you're agin', as Radley at The Agitator demonstrates here and here.

Labels: cocaine, dogs, pain, search, Supreme Court

 
Three Quick Alcohol-Related Items
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 3:45 PM

(1) "French may classify wine as food, not alcohol" -- This will allow the circumvention of controls on alcohol advertisements. The short linked article also notes the drastic decline in wine consumption in France: "Forty years ago, the average French consumer drank 134 bottles of wine a year, compared to only 77 today."

(2) Slovak towns must adjust to life after alcohol, tobacco taxes. It isn't that their residents have stopped consuming these vicious goods; rather, Slovakia's entry into the EU, it seems, precludes municipalities from imposing their own taxes on these items.

(3) The Alaskan village of Togiak has an alcohol-sniffing dog named Rex. Alcohol sales and imports have been prohibited in Togiak for twenty years, but some folks still try to smuggle in the contraband to resell to some of the 825 villagers. Liquor apparently sells at a huge markup thanks to the ban, with a bottle costing $10 in Anchorage going for some $150. Wow. The town has a drug-sniffing dog, too. Actually, three police dogs (the third is for search-and-rescue, and was thrown in for free by the Huntsville, Alabama supplier) but only two human officers. The police chief "originally hoped to use the same dog to sniff out alcohol and drugs but was cautioned that, for legal reasons surrounding search and seizure laws, a dog shouldn't be trained for both." It does sound as if the police in Togiak are more attentive to legal niceties than are many of their brethren in the drug prohibition world: "Random searches of incoming bags and mail are unconstitutional, so he [the police chief] can't search every bag. And if he finds something suspicious and Rex indicates signs of booze, the person must consent to a search or the city needs a search warrant."

Labels: alcohol, dogs, EU, France, search, taxes

 
How Probable is Probable? Search Warrants as a Tool to Combat Drug Sales
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:03 PM

To procure a search warrant against purported drug sellers, investigators must demonstrate probable cause that drug dealing is taking place. So one might suspect that most or almost all search warrants aimed at drug distributors would result in drug sale charges.

Well, not in Columbia, Missouri. Here is the beginning of a story from the Columbia Missourian, accessed via MAP:

"The search warrant is a frequently deployed weapon in the Columbia Police Department's war on drugs. Since January 2003, officers have searched 120 residences using a tool that, according to one police commander, is designed to target people who sell narcotics.

Yet police rarely find enough evidence during those searches to make the case for drug dealing. Court records say that in 2003, police searched 84 residences and found evidence of drug distribution in 12 of them; six of those cases were eventually reduced to possession charges. Through this April, police have exercised 36 search warrants and have netted seven distribution charges.

Of the 120 search warrants served in the past 16 months, distribution charges have held up in court against 13 suspects. Cases involving 45 of the 120 search warrants have been sealed. Those cases are considered confidential, according to the Boone County circuit clerk's office, because charges were never filed or the defendants pleaded guilty to a charge they weren't originally charged with."

So it looks as if the clues that provide probable cause in Columbia are every bit as reliable as drug dogs in Illinois, or high electricity bills.

Here's a 60 Minutes story detailing some drug dog deficiencies (or maybe it is their trainers and handlers who are deficient); I alerted to this story thanks to a co-blogger.

Labels: dogs, drugs, policing, search

 
Drug War Chronicle Highlights
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 12:45 PM

Drug War Chronicle, a newsletter produced at Stop the Drug War.org (now linked
on the Vice Squad sidebar) is chock-full of interesting items this week. I'll mention
four of them here:

(1) A driver was stopped on Interstate 95 in Georgia in 2001 for a traffic
violation. After being told that he would receive only a warning ticket, he
was asked to consent to a search. The motorist refused. The officer then
quickly called for a drug-sniffing dog to join the party -- a common tactic
that is employed against those few motorists who actually exercise their
right to refuse to a consent search. About twelve minutes later, the dog
arrived and "alerted" to the trunk of the motorist's car. A search ensued,
in which some marijuana and more than 10,000 ecstasy pills were found.

Now a federal appeals court has ruled that the search violated the Fourth
Amendment. The opinion (pdf version here) is based primarily on the
belief of the court that reasonable suspicion for the dog sniff did not exist
prior to the motorist's refusal to consent to a search. That is, the dog
sniff appeared to be brought on not by other reasonable suspicion, but
rather by the exercise of the Constitutional right not to consent to a
warrantless search. So this opinion, it seems, does not make dog sniffs
unconstitutional in the Eleventh district; rather, it requires that there be
reasonable suspicion prior to such a sniff, and that refusal to consent to
a search cannot itself provide the reasonable suspicion.

Vice Squad earlier wrote about a state of Illinois case that similarly mandated
reasonable suspicion for dog sniffs.

(2) Italy appears to be on the brink of a significant rollback of it drug
decriminalization by instituting administrative penalties for those
found in possession of small quantities of currently illegal drugs. This is
not the first about-face for Italian drug policy: a 1975 decriminalization
(actually, depenalization) was reversed in 1990, and then reinstated in
1993. (This is a microcosm of vice policy generally, and not just in Italy --
recurring, significant swings seemingly unrelated to new scientific
evidence. ) Vice Squad noted the potential for the Italian rollback a few
months ago, here.

(3) Argentina appears to be headed in the opposite direction,
considering a bill that would decriminalize drugs (not just pot) for
personal use. According to the Drug War Chronicle story, "If the bill is
enacted, Argentina would join Colombia, Peru, and Uruguay as Latin
American countries that have decriminalized, or in Colombia's case,
legalized drug use and possession." But the decriminalization adoption
in Argentina seems to be much less of a sure thing than the Italian
repenalization. [Furthermore, I believe that the claim that drug
possession has been legalized in Colombia is false.]

(4) Meanwhile, Bhutan is going the drug prohibitionists one better, by
banning the sale of tobacco products. Many US states banned
cigarette sales in the early part of the 20th century; for that matter,
Uzbekistan has banned billiards. The urge to prohibit other people's
vices appears to be one of the enduring, unifying themes of mankind.

Labels: dogs, drugs, Italy, policing, Prohibition, search, tobacco