“The laws on cannabis have changed in such a drastic way as to render the smell of burnt cannabis, standing alone, insufficient to provide probable cause for a police officer to search a vehicle wi…
I don’t think the dogs’ ability to smell things is in question, but the ability of humans to reliably use that sense of smell and not inadvertently get the dogs to respond to an accidental or deliberate signal from their handler.
Ultimately, the dogs want to please their human, not sniff out drugs, and if police are looking for some pretext to search a car, then signaling with or without drugs will please the human.
Dogs should only be used once a warrant is issued to help speed up a search. At which point, if they aren’t good at it, they’ll eventually just stop using them. If they can be used to bypass warrants entirely, then that is their usefulness, not how good they are at finding drugs or not signaling when there isn’t anything to be found.
I don’t think the dogs’ ability to smell things is in question, but the ability of humans to reliably use that sense of smell and not inadvertently get the dogs to respond to an accidental or deliberate signal from their handler.
Ultimately, the dogs want to please their human, not sniff out drugs, and if police are looking for some pretext to search a car, then signaling with or without drugs will please the human.
Dogs should only be used once a warrant is issued to help speed up a search. At which point, if they aren’t good at it, they’ll eventually just stop using them. If they can be used to bypass warrants entirely, then that is their usefulness, not how good they are at finding drugs or not signaling when there isn’t anything to be found.