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Comment by lsiebert | Hacker News Reader

Now they will simply add an extra officer. As long as he conducts the search while the other officer does traffic related things, I don't see how this would prevent a dog sniff search.

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That's my reading too. But before we get too mechanistic about what's going to happen: no police department can afford to put two officers and a drug dog in every traffic patrol car. Police departments will be able to adapt so that the patrols that already had drug dogs will often (but not always) be able to use them. What they won't be able to do is ensure that any stop can be converted on a whim to a drug search.

It's an incremental win, but a win.

To do that, you'd have to know in advance which officers were going to be making traffic stops in which they would want an excuse to make an otherwise unconstitutional excuse so you could preposition K9 units to assist them, or you'd have to have every patrol car have two officers and a dog. Either of these is impractical.

We should cut to the subtext here and stipulate: trained dog handling officers can cue their dogs to alert.

So the problem is, if you're on a traffic patrol and already have a drug dog (many do), then the following sequence remains blessed:

1. Make a reasonable traffic stop

2. Approach vehicle with drug dog

3. Cue dog to alert concurrent with traffic stop handling

4. Conduct car search based on cued alert

No delay has been added in this procedure, and by the letter of the opinion today, it looks like that search will hold up.

Drug dogs are basically lie detectors with fur. Just as unreliable, just as easy to misuse, and yet people still think they're doing something useful.

What happens when a large percentage of the cued alerts result in nothing found via search?

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-01-06/news/ct-met-ca...

Evidently a Supreme Court Ruling. Hopefully there will be a ruling that drug dogs aren't considered probable cause soon.

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