Troopers Say Police Dogs Trained To False Alert As Pretext To Seize People's Money

Chris | InformationLiberation
Jun. 27, 2012

Vegas troopers have filed suit against the Nevada Highway Patrol and the Las Vegas Metro police alleging their K-9 training program is a fraud and their dogs are being trained to false alert as a pretext to seize people's cash and property.

Via KLAS Las Vegas:

A group of Nevada Highway Patrol troopers and a retired police sergeant have filed a racketeering complaint against the NHP and Las Vegas Metro Police in U.S. District Court.

The complaint alleges that after then-Gov. Jim Gibbons approved a K-9 program to target drug runners on Nevada's highways, Nevada Highway Patrol Commander Chris Perry intentionally undermined the program.

The complaint alleges that the drug-sniffing dogs used by troopers in the program were intentionally being trained to operate as so-called trick ponies, or dogs that provide officers false alerts for the presence of drugs.

The dogs were being trained to alert their handlers by cues, instead of by picking up a drug's scent by sniffing, the complaint said. When a dog gives a false alert, this resulted in illegal searches and seizures, including money and property, the complaint said.

The 103-page complaint alleges that Perry, along with others, used the K-9s to undermine the program to systematically conduct illegal searches and seizures for financial benefit.

Police dogs are in no way superhuman drug detecting machines, they're wild animals who give false alerts due to all sorts of outside stimuli, for example if you had a cat in your car the dogs are all but guaranteed to go crazy. Outside all the environmental stimuli which can cause the dogs to false alert, police frequently simply train their dogs to false alert on cue. Here's a video example of a false alert for those who are unfamiliar with this scam.

The real problem here is that police dogs ''alerting'' gives cops probable cause to initiate a search. A recent study by the Chicago Tribune showed police dogs were wrong the majority of the time. In no way is this a solid science, searches should not be initiated and people's rights should not be permitted to be violated based off the actions of a random "trained" animal.
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Chris runs the website InformationLiberation.com, you can read more of his writings here. Follow infolib on twitter here.