{"id":33967,"date":"2022-07-20T08:29:54","date_gmt":"2022-07-20T08:29:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/?p=33967"},"modified":"2022-07-20T08:29:54","modified_gmt":"2022-07-20T08:29:54","slug":"police-dogs-arent-trained-to-detect-the-deadly-drug-fueling-maine-overdoses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/2022\/07\/20\/police-dogs-arent-trained-to-detect-the-deadly-drug-fueling-maine-overdoses\/","title":{"rendered":"Police dogs aren\u2019t trained to detect the deadly drug fueling Maine overdoses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> [ad_1]<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Drug-sniffing dogs are a powerful weapon in law enforcement\u2019s battle against illegal narcotics. If a police officer pulls over someone\u2019s vehicle, and a dog\u2019s powerful nose picks up the scent of illicit substances such as heroin, methamphetamine, crack or cocaine, the officer can legally search the car without a warrant.<\/p>\n<p>But the dominance of a newer, deadlier drug in Maine has introduced a challenge for law enforcement tools that primarily rely on their noses. Fentanyl, the highly potent synthetic opioid that\u2019s fueling the state\u2019s overdose death toll, has <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bangordailynews.com\/2020\/09\/22\/news\/york\/state-police-found-lots-of-fentanyl-and-no-heroin-on-southern-maine-turnpike-this-summer\/\" rel=\"noopener\">increasingly supplanted<\/a>\u00a0the street market for heroin, police say. And for <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.jsonline.com\/story\/news\/local\/wisconsin\/2018\/02\/19\/police-dogs-risk-accidental-overdose-opioid-epidemic\/341609002\/\" rel=\"noopener\">safety<\/a>\u00a0and legal reasons, drug dogs are not trained to detect it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy sense is, yeah, it\u2019s a huge issue,\u201d said Kyle Heyen, a South Dakota-based working dog expert and former police dog handler. \u201cIt\u2019s getting through. It\u2019s all over.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n<aside id=\"custom_html-18\" class=\"widget_text widget_custom_html clearfix\"\/><\/aside>\n<p>While it\u2019s difficult, if not impossible, to estimate the degree to which the drug is slipping by police, experts said, the issue spotlights yet another way fentanyl has been an especially devious force in a worsening public health crisis that will take more than just law enforcement to fix. The drug drove <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bangordailynews.com\/2022\/01\/19\/news\/maine-saw-a-record-number-of-overdose-deaths-in-2021\/\" rel=\"noopener\">record fatal overdoses<\/a>\u00a0in Maine last year, causing 77 percent of the 636 drug deaths in 2021, state data show. Fentanyl can be up to 100 times more potent than heroin.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, instances where dogs have alerted to fentanyl are renewing long-running concerns about dogs\u2019 reliability in the field.<\/p>\n<p>Dog trainers, former handlers and police officials said fentanyl\u2019s potency is one reason police don\u2019t allow their dogs to interact with it in training over fears they could inhale it. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cCould a dog be trained to find it? Yes. Could it be done safely? No. That\u2019s my opinion,\u201d Heyen said. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t train\u00a0it because that means I\u2019ve got to handle it. One \u2018oops\u2019 is all it takes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There is another complication. Warrantless searches are only allowed if dogs alert to illegal substances, and, unlike heroin, fentanyl can be prescribed to treat severe pain. As a result, training dogs to detect fentanyl could lead to searches of people who haven\u2019t done anything illegal, in violation of their Fourth Amendment rights. <\/p>\n<p>For that reason, \u201cWe do not train a dog to alert to fentanyl, as that alert could jeopardize admission of any evidence seized,\u201d said David Procopio, director of media communications for the Massachusetts State Police.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-3    \">\n<aside id=\"newspack-ads-widget-20\" class=\"widget_newspack-ads-widget clearfix\"\/><\/aside>\n<p>Officials with the Maine State Police and Maine Criminal Justice Academy, the agencies that train and certify dog teams, declined to discuss in interviews how they\u2019ve adapted their methods to the prevalence of fentanyl. However, the state\u2019s chief dog trainer testified in court as recently as December that narcotics dogs are not trained to find fentanyl. <\/p>\n<p>The rise of fentanyl has created new opportunities to scrutinize dogs and their oversight.<\/p>\n<p>For example, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2017\/11\/20\/563889510\/preventing-police-bias-when-handling-dogs-that-bite\" rel=\"noopener\">research<\/a>\u00a0has shown handlers can cue the dogs to alert, often by accident. But courts have <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/the-watch\/wp\/2015\/08\/04\/federal-appeals-court-drug-dog-thats-barely-more-accurate-than-a-coin-flip-is-good-enough\/\" rel=\"noopener\">made it hard<\/a>\u00a0to challenge a dog sniff when the animal has been certified, even if the dog makes mistakes or deviates from its training in the field. Lawyers have also complained about the difficulty of getting field records that describe a dog\u2019s behavior outside of training scenarios.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-4    \">\n<aside id=\"newspack-ads-widget-19\" class=\"widget_newspack-ads-widget clearfix\"\/><\/aside>\n<p>Now, defense attorneys have run into situations where police find fentanyl on their client even when the dog wasn\u2019t trained on the drug. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe trend for the last decade has been fentanyl, not heroin. It\u2019s been fentanyl. In fact, I haven\u2019t seen a case that involved heroin in years,\u201d Heather Gonzales, a lawyer with the Federal Defenders Office, argued during an evidence suppression hearing last December in U.S. District Court in Portland. <\/p>\n<p>A state police trooper stopped her client, Jenny Santana-Vasquez, for speeding in late 2018. He summoned a drug dog, a yellow lab named Mack, to the scene when he suspected deeper criminal activity was afoot. <\/p>\n<p>When police found fentanyl on her client, Gonzales argued Mack\u2019s alert on the exterior of Santana-Vasquez\u2019s Jeep should be considered unreliable and was one of several reasons to suspect Mack\u2019s credibility. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe K9s in Maine aren\u2019t trained in fentanyl, but they\u2019re hitting on vehicles, again and again and again, when the only drug that\u2019s found is fentanyl, like in this case,\u201d Gonzales argued, according to a transcript of the hearing.<\/p>\n<p>Mack\u2019s handler, Cpl. Jesse Duda, testified that Mack likely picked up on residual odors of drugs he is trained to detect, a theory that experts said would go against how dogs are usually trained. When dogs are learning to alert\u00a0in the presence of drugs, they are also learning not to alert where a trainer previously hid drugs, said Andy Falco, a dog training expert and former police dog handler. <\/p>\n<p>Judge George Z. Singal ultimately sided with prosecutors and allowed the case to move forward.<\/p>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>More articles from the BDN<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p>\n<section id=\"custom_html-20\" class=\"widget_text below-content widget widget_custom_html\"\/>\t<\/div>\n<p>[ad_2]<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bangordailynews.com\/2022\/07\/20\/mainefocus\/police-dogs-and-fentanyl-joam40zk0w\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[ad_1] Drug-sniffing dogs are a powerful weapon in law enforcement\u2019s battle against illegal narcotics. If&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33968,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33967"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33969,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33967\/revisions\/33969"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}