UK Drug Dogs Finding Way More Sausage And Cheese Than Actual Drugs

from the anyone-who-owns-a-dog-completely-unsurprised dept

Wed, Apr 20th 2016 3:28am — Tim Cushing

Drug dogs here in the US are mainly one-trick ponies, to clumsily mix a metaphor. Domesticated canines aim to please. Training of drug dogs involves giving them treats or toys upon alerting. You don't have to be Pavlov to see how this plays out in the real world. Dogs will alert in hopes of a reward or be nudged in that direction by conscious or unconscious "nudges" by their handlers. Hence, we have drug dogs in use with horrendous track records. (But, notably, not horrendous enough to result in judicial smackdowns, for the most part.)

The UK deploys its own drug dogs as well. Turns out they have the same problems… sort of. For one, they're not all that great at detecting drugs or other contraband, according to a report by the UK's Independent Inspector of Borders and Immigration. (via Mashable)

The report finds the human staff at the Manchester Airport to be mostly capable. The dogs, however, not so much.

The deterrent effect of the detection dogs was difficult to measure, but seizures alone represented a low return on investment, given £1.25m spent on new kennels and the costs of operating the unit.

Apparently, one of the key forms of contraband the drug dogs were supposed to detect went completely undetected during an eight-month period.

Heroin and cocaine were assessed as 'very high' priority within both air passengers and freight. Yet, according to the data provided by Border Force, the dogs had made no Class A drugs detections in the period November 2014 to June 2015.

It's not that the dogs weren't detecting anything at all. There were "alerts," but they weren't for illegal drugs, cash, etc. and they weren't false alerts triggered by handlers. Instead, the dogs appeared to be operating on empty stomachs.

When deployed, the POAO dog made multiple accurate detections, but most were of small amounts of cheese or sausages, wrongly brought back by returning British holidaymakers and posing minimal risk to UK public health.

The only motivation more powerful than the innate desire to please: the desire to consume sausage and cheese.

To be fair, the dogs did detect some illegal drugs…

In our own sample from 1 November to 30 April (Figure 16), the six detections were three small amounts of Class B drugs and three lots of tablets – Human Growth Hormone, Viagra and Bromazepam.

Which is why the Inspector is understandably unimpressed that six dogs have cost the agency £1.25m plus whatever yearly maintenance costs. The report cuts the underperforming dogs a lot of slack by suggesting "routine" use has altered drug smugglers' strategies to route around the drug sniffers. On the other hand, the multiple "detections" of foodstuffs dogs naturally find delicious suggests £1.25m isn't enough money to feed the dogs properly.

The agency agrees with the Inspector, leading to this very weird sentence.

A senior manager agreed that there was a lack of innovation in the use of the dogs.

Perhaps we've reached peak drug dog. There may be no further innovation possible. The reality is that, while the animals enjoy the use of heightened senses, they're still just animals and will default to instinctual behavior faster than (most) humans will. It really wouldn't be a problem if law enforcement and security officials recognized this inherent drawback, but they rarely do. Instead, trained dogs are presented to citizens and courts as miracles of nature and instrumental contributors to various Wars on Things -- even as evidence continues to mount indicating they're no better at detecting contraband than their handlers, who don't possess heightened olfactory capabilities.

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Filed Under: drug dogs, food, investigations, uk

34 Comments

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Ninja (profile), 20 Apr 2016 @ 4:04am

Inmate 1: "I was arrested for mass shooting toddlers. And you?"
Inmate 2: "Apparently smuggling sausage and cheese across international borders."
Inmates in chorus: "Good Lord man, haven't you got any shame?"

UK Dogs: keeping Britons free from dangerous sausage and cheese and protecting traditional fish and potatoes.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Apr 2016 @ 4:12am

the dogs stop drugs just like this rock that keeps tigers away.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Apr 2016 @ 4:46am

My guess
Dogs are perfect for sniffing out whatever substance you like. I have no doubt about how accurate the sense of smell of a dog is. The real question is how good the training was.

Good training takes time and money.

And my guess is that those £1.25m were not spent on training dogs...
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Apr 2016 @ 4:51am

Meanwhile in Florida...
Drug dogs have always been overused in Florida. Now Fish & Wildlife has got in to the game and have "fish dogs". They have dogs to sniff boats to see if you have any illegal catches hidden onboard. With very short fishing seasons and 2 fish limits it's turned into a bit of a cash cow. $2k fine per illegal fish. I'm sure some legislator sold the idea on how much bank they'll make (after forgetting about the cost of training and upkeep on the dogs).
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Apr 2016 @ 4:55am

Re: Meanwhile in Florida...
"it's turned into a bit of a cash cow"

This is their mission. With asset forfeiture, everything is guilty and therefore subject to confiscation. It is for our own benefit .. I feel so much safer already.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Apr 2016 @ 4:56am

Cost Effective
But, a dog's upkeep is still less than a judge's salary. So money is saved by letting cops get a dog's permission to perform a search rather than having to get a search warrant from a judge.
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Whatever, 20 Apr 2016 @ 4:58am

What a crock. So a few people had their time wasted, is that such a big deal? What's the alternative? Would you rather that people who carry drugs also carry sausages and cheese so you can write this horseshit at the police's expense?

Oh, right. This is TechDirt, where every day is "Fuck the Police" Day.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Apr 2016 @ 5:10am

Question: if the agents find cheese and sausage do they stop and let you go? Can you hide your drugs behind a veneer of cheese and sausage to get past the dogs?
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UriGagarin (profile), 20 Apr 2016 @ 5:13am

Dawgs
Actually part of the story that isn't mentioned here is that the dog(s?) are also looking for contraband food such as bush meat so false positives on sausages is going to happen.
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Jeremy Lyman (profile), 20 Apr 2016 @ 5:21am

Re:
And they allll moved away from me on the bench there; till I said "and resisting' arrest" and they all came back, shook my hand and we had a great time on the bench, talkin' about crime, smuggling and shootin, all kinds of groovy things we was talking about on the bench.
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rikuo, 20 Apr 2016 @ 5:48am

Re:
It's always nice to see Whatever not caring whatsoever about a literal waste of taxpayer money with naught to show for it. I mean, let's continue wasting money on drug dogs, instead of something else that may actually result in some positive detections for once!
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Apr 2016 @ 6:20am

Response to: Whatever on Apr 20th, 2016 @ 4:58am
So you'd rather see the police allow passengers to smuggle drugs across borders because they rely on ineffective tools? If you're so pro-cop wouldn't you want them to perform better? Or do you want us to accept they are incompetent, some fatally so and will never live up to the expectations set before them.
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Wiggum, 20 Apr 2016 @ 6:21am

spanish ham
on the good side
airport personnel have a booming raise in blood clots
and heart attacks
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PaulT (profile), 20 Apr 2016 @ 6:25am

Re:
"So a few people had their time wasted, is that such a big deal?"

How many missed flights and connections? How much did that cost them? How many missed business meetings and other related costs? Not to mention the costs of the people really wasting time - the dogs' trainers, handlers and other staff who could have been doing something effective.

"What's the alternative?"

Investing in effective ways of catching people with drugs rather than spending over $2 million of taxpayer money on catching people with "small amounts" of food (read: people bringing back food from holiday they were unaware were not allowed despite the fact that they'd gorged themselves on the same food the previous night without issue)? that seems like a wise use of the money to me.

"Would you rather that people who carry drugs also carry sausages and cheese"

The 6 people who this program caught without them doing so, half of whom were on carrying "small amounts" and as such mostly personal use and thus not stopping any trafficking? Sure, why not, it's not like major smugglers were getting caught anyway.

"This is TechDirt, where every day is "Fuck the Police" Day."

No, it's always "moron trying to derail the tread" day, however. Why address the problems when you can make stupid statements and pretend they don't exist?
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Apr 2016 @ 6:43am

Re:
Is this a parody of the "real" Whatever?
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John Fenderson (profile), 20 Apr 2016 @ 6:44am

Re:
"So a few people had their time wasted, is that such a big deal?"

The big deal isn't the wasting of the time.
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PaulT (profile), 20 Apr 2016 @ 6:54am

Re: Re:
It's hard to tell, especially as the "real" one has apparently been caught admitting to ocassionally log out and troll as an AC
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Whatever, 20 Apr 2016 @ 7:03am

Re: Re:
Fuck you too, PaulT. The adults are trying to have a discussion. Run along with your little pirated ball.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Apr 2016 @ 7:28am

On the plus side they can cut back the dog training budget. Pretty sure a German Shepard doesn't need any special training to smell deli products.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Apr 2016 @ 7:32am

Wondered why my imported schnitzel smelled like dog urine.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Apr 2016 @ 7:39am

Re: Re: Re:
Breaks down at the first sign legitimate counter.
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AricTheRed, 20 Apr 2016 @ 8:15am

Re: Re:
I always prefer a littoral waste of taxpayer money, much better than a literal waste.
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Derek Kerton (profile), 20 Apr 2016 @ 9:07am

Re:
"dangerous sausage and cheese"

I believe the technical term, though, is "The pikey is in Her Majesty's Prison Brixton doing 20 years for bangers and mash".
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DB (profile), 20 Apr 2016 @ 9:31am

Wait... the dogs are credited with finding Viagra?

That puts this in a different light. The dogs aren't actually sniffing out drugs. They are triggering on other things, including tasty food. The near-random searches are turning up related illicit materials, and the dog are given credit for the interception.

How many bags were searched where nothing was found? How do the dogs compare with randomly selecting bags? What about a feed-back based system biased by color/size/wear/origin of earlier interceptions?
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nasch (profile), 20 Apr 2016 @ 10:15am

Re: Meanwhile in Florida...
They have dogs to sniff boats to see if you have any illegal catches hidden onboard.

And there's no reason a fishing boat would smell like fish unless there were illegal fish in it, I'm sure.
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nasch (profile), 20 Apr 2016 @ 10:21am

Re: Re:
Investing in effective ways of catching people with drugs

Or don't. That would be an even better alternative.
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nasch (profile), 20 Apr 2016 @ 10:24am

Re:
How do the dogs compare with randomly selecting bags?

I don't know about those ones in particular, but some do pretty poorly.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160209/09322733559/drug-dogs-dont-even-have-to-be-right-h alf-time-to-be-considered-reliable-courts.shtml
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David, 20 Apr 2016 @ 2:30pm

The role of the dogs is that of dowsing rods
Where the dog handlers are already in interaction with persons, the signals the dogs will pick up will be the hunches of the handlers. Assuming that this is not a conscious deception, this works somewhat like dowsing rods, providing a way to bring the subconscious to the surface by believing it to be an external entity.

Now the thing is that a dowsing rod carrier would not suffice as "probably cause", but the dogs do. They probably do a better job when working in baggage/ware stores where the distraction with the interaction is gone.

They probably would still be better at figuring out suspects without handler interaction (because dogs are rather good at picking up actual emotions rather than displayed ones), but if you don't want to employ their people skills but their sense of smell, it's probably best to employ them offline.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Apr 2016 @ 5:40pm

Re: Re: Re:
Let's see, usual cocksucking of authority, a hard-on for PaulT, overbearing sense of self-righteousness... sounds like the real Whatever to me.
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PaulT (profile), 21 Apr 2016 @ 1:19am

Re: Re: Re:
Childish tantrum, personal attack, refusal to debate any of the points raised, outright lie about something that has nothing to do with the discussion at hand while laughably claiming to be trying an honest discussion?

Yep, this seems to be the real Whatever.
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PaulT (profile), 21 Apr 2016 @ 1:20am

Re: Re: Re: Re:
That he's claiming to be the real adult here with that last reply is the icing on the cake.
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Anonymous Coward, 21 Apr 2016 @ 6:04am

*sigh*

I better stock up on Sausages before Theresa May has them banned as some sort of "legal high."
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Anonymous Coward, 21 Apr 2016 @ 6:55am

Re:
Would you rather that people who carry drugs also carry sausages and cheese so you can write this horseshit at the police's expense?

Yes! Personally, I think we should ALL carry sausage and cheeses just to mess with the dogs.

I mean, given how wasting someone's time is no big deal and all...
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hopponit (profile), 21 Apr 2016 @ 6:19pm

dogs and sausage
What kind (breed) of dogs are they using.I helped raise funds for a new dog for our local force (they are pretty good guys thank you) after the death of a couple older K9s. While doing research I noticed a preference for Dobermans and other "tough" dogs. This was true even though the cost of this type of dog ended up being $12,000. vs $1,400 for bloodhounds.The bloodhounds are easy to train for tracking and really good at sniffing things out and take to it naturally. The other dog breeds must be cross trained later to be able to sniff out things for even more money.The bloodhounds just don't look as menacing.
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