TSA's bomb-sniffing dogs
#301
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I wonder what will happen when a dog alerts on a pax and the only 'contraband' on that pax is an illegal drug - coke, say.
If LE is called and the pax is found with illegal drugs - but no other contraband that TSA would be looking for - will a possession case hold up in court?
If LE is called and the pax is found with illegal drugs - but no other contraband that TSA would be looking for - will a possession case hold up in court?
#302
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The issue is that the TSA Director (like all of the others) is a dumbass and shouldn't be saying stupid stuff like the did.
But, when you hire US Coastie Officers that have been riding a desk the last 20 some years, you get what you get.
#303
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Not sure about K9 alerts, but I know in the past, screeners have done secondary searches and found illegal drugs and called us (MCI LEO) and we made the arrest and had the screener write a statement on what transpired...... and pushed it forward to the County PA and they were charged/convicted. That happened at least 5-6 times I can recall.
Isn't there some kind of law that says if an officer pulls me over and searches my car without probable cause/reasonable suspicion and without my permission, anything found can be challenged and possibly tossed in court? Doesn't that include deliberating delaying a driver who declines a search until a dog can arrive?
I suspect the argument the government would make in this case is that if I present myself at the checkpoint, that is tacit permission for LE to search me without any suspicion or reasonable cause other than the fact that I bought a plane ticket.
#304
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If I am wrong, I would love to see the case history on it.
#305
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Both of those, I suspect, will be challenged along with others sine the Court seems to be leaning more to the Right and will even go more Right of RBG retires or passes.
Suspecting that's what the argument would be and suspecting it would be held up in court.....
#306
Join Date: Mar 2006
Posts: 576
I wonder what will happen when a dog alerts on a pax and the only 'contraband' on that pax is an illegal drug - coke, say.
If LE is called and the pax is found with illegal drugs - but no other contraband that TSA would be looking for - will a possession case hold up in court?
The courts may say that the very act of buying a ticket and showing up at the airport constitutes consent to any searches, no different than being pulled over for a traffic stop and consenting to a search. The question arises: if the dog is not trained to alert on drugs and no aviation-related contraband was found, then what did the dog alert on?
I'm kind of surprised they don't seem to pay more attention to shoes. There have been two foiled attempts - the crotch bomber and the shoe bomber. Shoes go through the xray, but the xray still can't conclusively identify explosives (or so we are told). I don't recall hearing about people's shoes being confiscated, but folks being swabbed have generated false positives from walking through/around fertilizer. The xray can't alert on that and relatively few pax get their shoes swabbed, but I would think the dogs would be picking up on the fertilizer (or hand cream) that the swabs do.
Does anyone know if the dogs are more finely tuned than the swab analyzers? Can the dogs recognize and ignore fertilizer traces that will set off the swab analyzer?
If the dog cleared something and the swab analyzer alerted, I wonder if the item in question would still be confiscated out of an abundance of caution.
If LE is called and the pax is found with illegal drugs - but no other contraband that TSA would be looking for - will a possession case hold up in court?
The courts may say that the very act of buying a ticket and showing up at the airport constitutes consent to any searches, no different than being pulled over for a traffic stop and consenting to a search. The question arises: if the dog is not trained to alert on drugs and no aviation-related contraband was found, then what did the dog alert on?
I'm kind of surprised they don't seem to pay more attention to shoes. There have been two foiled attempts - the crotch bomber and the shoe bomber. Shoes go through the xray, but the xray still can't conclusively identify explosives (or so we are told). I don't recall hearing about people's shoes being confiscated, but folks being swabbed have generated false positives from walking through/around fertilizer. The xray can't alert on that and relatively few pax get their shoes swabbed, but I would think the dogs would be picking up on the fertilizer (or hand cream) that the swabs do.
Does anyone know if the dogs are more finely tuned than the swab analyzers? Can the dogs recognize and ignore fertilizer traces that will set off the swab analyzer?
If the dog cleared something and the swab analyzer alerted, I wonder if the item in question would still be confiscated out of an abundance of caution.
#307
Join Date: Nov 2007
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This a very overbroad statement. While some aspects of the training for military working dogs is very similar to that of Explosives Detection dogs, most of the training for explosives detection is NOT like that for military dogs trained for bite work.
#308
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No, not at all. Putting yourself in the queue at a checkpoint is consent for TSA to conduct an administrative search for prohibited items; a boarding pass is not a required element. Presenting one's self at an airport checkpoint is not consent for a criminal search by other federal LE or the local airport law enforcement. This is why TSOs do not have powers of arrest and why they notify actual LE when a prohibited item or suspected prohibited/contraband item is identified.
#309
Join Date: Sep 2012
Posts: 574
I call BS. If the "administrative" search leads to prompt investigation by law enforcement officers, then it is effectively a "criminal" search.
Lots of our Constitutional Rights are being encroached upon by ostensibly harmless "administrative" procedures...like Civil Forfeiture...don't be fooled by the euphemisms.
Lots of our Constitutional Rights are being encroached upon by ostensibly harmless "administrative" procedures...like Civil Forfeiture...don't be fooled by the euphemisms.
#310
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I call BS. If the "administrative" search leads to prompt investigation by law enforcement officers, then it is effectively a "criminal" search.
Lots of our Constitutional Rights are being encroached upon by ostensibly harmless "administrative" procedures...like Civil Forfeiture...don't be fooled by the euphemisms.
Lots of our Constitutional Rights are being encroached upon by ostensibly harmless "administrative" procedures...like Civil Forfeiture...don't be fooled by the euphemisms.
#311
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Same with TSA/FPS/ICE/FAM/USMS/FBI/ATFE/or anyone else that uses dogs for LEO EOD missions.
Some of the K9s Engineers used downrange looking for mines/EOD might be trained like that due to them being used in a war-time mission....but LE K9s are not.
#312
Join Date: Mar 2006
Posts: 576
That's not quite what I was getting at.
I suspect the argument the government would make in this case is that if I present myself at the checkpoint, that is tacit permission for LE to search me without any suspicion or reasonable cause other than the fact that I bought a plane ticket.
I suspect the argument the government would make in this case is that if I present myself at the checkpoint, that is tacit permission for LE to search me without any suspicion or reasonable cause other than the fact that I bought a plane ticket.
#313
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I could be wrong here but if there wasn't any suspicion, why would they want to interact with you? Do you think they are bored and want to do a few hours of paperwork? I just don't understand why someone with any common sense would want to bring their stash into a situation knowing that they will be screened, searched or whatever you want to call it. If a TSA K9 alerts on your drugs you should really be thankful because there is probably something bad mixed in it and they may have just saved you from a trip to the morgue.
I think the issue is if by some chance a TSA screener notices a persons stash then they are obligated to notify police. At that point the LEO doesn't need to establish "Probable Cause" or Reasonable Suspicion" to charge the person. So the TSA search somehow eliminated protections of the 4th amendment and effectively moved from an Administrative Search to a Law Enforcement search. To me that is problematic.
#314
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Military LEO K9s that work/trained for EOD are not trained to bite/protect the handler........
Same with TSA/FPS/ICE/FAM/USMS/FBI/ATFE/or anyone else that uses dogs for LEO EOD missions.
Some of the K9s Engineers used downrange looking for mines/EOD might be trained like that due to them being used in a war-time mission....but LE K9s are not.
Same with TSA/FPS/ICE/FAM/USMS/FBI/ATFE/or anyone else that uses dogs for LEO EOD missions.
Some of the K9s Engineers used downrange looking for mines/EOD might be trained like that due to them being used in a war-time mission....but LE K9s are not.
#315
Join Date: Nov 2010
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I could be wrong here but if there wasn't any suspicion, why would they want to interact with you? Do you think they are bored and want to do a few hours of paperwork? I just don't understand why someone with any common sense would want to bring their stash into a situation knowing that they will be screened, searched or whatever you want to call it. If a TSA K9 alerts on your drugs you should really be thankful because there is probably something bad mixed in it and they may have just saved you from a trip to the morgue.
The idea that a TSA canine might alert on someone's drug stash because The Terr'ists decided that it would be clever to secret explosives into some unsuspecting stoner's weed or coke is ludicrous on its face. Aside from the volume issue that Boogie Dog mentioned, there is also the stupidity of hiding explosives inside another prohibited substance that might get a person arrested before they get on the plane, not to mention the difficulty of Mr. Bad Actor somehow secretly stealing someone's drug stash, planting explosives in it, and then somehow returning to them for smuggling through the checkpoint...
As I said: Ludicrous on its face.
On the other hand, the idea that TSA secretly mixes drug-sniffing dogs into the ranks of the bomb-sniffing dogs, paranoid as it might sound, is not nearly as far-fetched (no pun intended). TSA has lied blatantly to the public before. It's not inconceivable that they might do so again, especially since TSA's upper management seems to be utterly convinced that they are part of a law enforcement agency whose mandate is to sniff out (again, no pun intended) criminals of all types, and that they have no restrictions on the location, type, duration, intensity, or invasiveness of their searches for any and all illicit items - or for any items that look vewwy, vewy scawy to any individual TSO.