Via Radley Balko…
NHP Troopers Sue Department Over K-9 Program
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 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.
The complaint also alleges the defendants, which also includes the state’s Public Safety Department and individuals in NHP and Metro, were involved in a Federal RICO conspiracy, also known as the Federal Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act.
Of course, we’re very much aware that drug-sniffing dogs often falsely alert to please their handler, which is one of the problems of using the dog sniff as the basis for a search anyway. But to have this level of conspiracy and to actually have state troopers file a racketeering complaint against their own agencies… that’s unheard of!
Kudos to those troopers. We need honest officers like them to step forward, or it’s almost impossible to stop the corrupt ones from destroying the rule of law.
These trooper’s be disrespecting the blue line. It’s time they pay for they crimes.unamerican slime.snitching on they boys.they be tools’disrespecting fools. Who knew who knew.bitches deserve stiches.they body’s should be missing. Fuck the public.they enemy #1.the police serve another. It’s the way of the bagde don’t snitch on yah brother. If yah do yah motha be locked up for drug charges.cause she deserves it.for producing a snitch. We can all agree they be tripping.they jealous.like them drug dealas.they be scumming up the place. Huge discrace. Dismember those snitches hide the body parts all over the state. Las vegas full of crime.stop wasting tax payers dime on bullshit racketeering lies.they wanna get ahead.enough to be said that they’d lie on fellow leos. They just as bad as them crack smokin negros.yup yup yup I just went bigoted but drug users triggered it.it’s my misson to make america listen. Beat a weedie in the head.they won’t be missed if they dead. Throw em in firedoglake.spread the justifiyed hate. Make no mistake this will be ur last wake in bake.fucking fakes. Go get ass raped.
losing a war has its consequenses. i wonder how a nark would get along in prison. the enemies of the constitution are getting nervous. they know they need correction.
Kudos to the honest cops. Forfeiture laws are wrong and rife with abuse. They make law officers indistinguishable from the bad guys.
amen to that…
the second time I was arrested for protesting nuclear weapons in ’83 the AF Security Police were there with their guard dogs… such vicious puppies, wagging their tails at all the happy peaceniks.
I love dogs. More than people usually. Couldn’t mistraining a canine for deceitful purposes be considered cruelty to animals? And of course there is that whole matter of all those cases that the mistrained puppies were used to convict someone that will have to be reviewed…
tsk tsk…
This reminds me of my illegal bust in Fairfax Virginia in August 2006 by 18 DEA and 5 local for 4lbs, complete with Virginia’s boilerplate testilying to ‘justify’ the stop- false testimony of failure to signal and a rolling stop when in fact I did signal and fully stop, a drug dog that NEVER signaled conventionally (oh he wagged his tail- the entire time, but never stoped or lingered), and the police video was ‘just grey static’.
http://wwwsouthcapitolstreet.blogspot.com/2006/10/south-capitol-mall-blogger-ambushed.html
To hell with that cigarette pushing protectionist satanic state.
This be my america.land of oppratutity bra.califorina desert wasteland.kill off the immgrents.stealing our bank.they claim to work.they just wanna sell you drugs.fuck that kill em.they be stealin.you know what I’m feeling. Just chillin.just chillin. Victory for the police who trained those dogs. Becouse yah gotta stack em. In the books.everyones a crook. Just give more police power. Watch crime drop within hour. Junkies devour meth laced weed cigarettes.how much you wanna bet.these marijuana monkeys are retarded as evolution.thc is pure pullution. We need the real bob dole he had the perfect solution. Mass underclass citizins excutions. 5 points for my jigga romney.he’ll save america from osoma bin never american.drug users complain becouse they hate freedom of choice. The children say no way and they have the loudest voice.don’t mess with kids yo.they the future yo.can’t tell them weed is okay yo. This junkie cj is in need of. Prison for his activizim for heroin injection plesures.kill em we caught him stealing a homer dounut from 7/11 shoot em he won’t make it to heaven.my moneys runnin low. So give me some slack .my flow like dynomite.its getten heavy.and everybody around me be getting boners from killing junkies and weedies. I rep that XXX straight egde sound.completly ill skill.the power to heal. Drug users are zombies.social diesesez.pound that sober snatch.won’t catch nothing that’s another ONDCP fact.fuck legalizion.that’s the equivent of child masterbation. Sick fucks that’s what u are.go to hollywood blvd and get ran over by a car.leave yah familys mentally scarred.the way it should be as a cop ends yah life with a razor.while another pops your gentials with a tazer.this is literal.you all are pure criminals. Jesus died becouse your selfish acts.get to the chruch fast.you needs a cleansing. Rocking iced out DARE bling cause its cool to roll like that.google map that shit.bitch before I bury u in a ditch. While yah girls sucking a cops dick.pulling tricks to get u out. But the bitch got a foul mouth.so five leos gang bang her.yeah my shit make no sense.ima annoyin troll. Pay my troll toll.why do I hate peo
Can’t sleep Mr. Wiggles? I know a safe, non-addictive sleeping aid that may just help you out. It’s inexpensive (compared to Ambien), and I can’t say for sure but it might help your tourettes, too.
Welcome back, brb. This one was a little rough, but I like that you never lose sight of the obscene-anti-drugs-hip-hop angle. It’s important that that angle be, ah, represented.
Good feature piece at the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/magazine/alex-white-professional-snitch.html?hpw
A shocking story of life under the drug laws approved of by the president. How ironic that an ad appears on the last page of this report enticing people to “Get on board, we’ll cover your air fair” paid for by the Obama for America campaign.
OT: Well, the Roberts Court may have just stepped in it big time.
As I knew they would, they are engaging in an expansion of Federal powers under the ACA by using the Commerce Clause for reasons for which it was never originally intended. And they base that Commerce Clause-cited expansion of power on Raich. Which was as a direct rebuke of the ‘pseudo-federalism’ the government has engaged in for decades with regards to illicit drugs.
It’s the Harrison Narcotics Act and the ‘Marijuana Tax Act’ all over again; the legislation passed by Congress and approved by the SC because it’s a ‘tax’. Drug law reformers know from history where that leads; the rest of the country will soon find out what we already know, that, as Ben Franklin said so long ago, “The power to tax is the power to destroy.”
This is truly great to see. Not just because it shines a light on false alerts but that it also could establish traction for other jurisdictions to start investigating the suspicious number of happy alerting dogs.
That said, I feel that these men have a long and difficult case ahead of them. Definitely keeping an eye on this one.
The current president thinks everyone not on direct nannycare has a grove of money trees in the back 40. This RICO charge should be interesting to follow, IF, they report on it, which I believe will be kept low key.
a more detailed story in the Las Vegas Review Journal (hopefully LVRJ’ Vin Supriniewicz will weigh in on this with one of his excellent anti-WOD opeds):
Officers file suit alleging wrongdoing in police dog training program
Doh! But then maybe he had his fingers crossed and whispered “but not the K9s.”
All in a days work for the police when bounty money,seizure profits and overtime are the rewards versus busting pedophiles,burglars and car thieves,,safer also.
US wrestler booted from Olympics after drug test
http://tinyurl.com/d6frf8a
DES MOINES, Iowa — U.S. wrestler Stephany Lee has been suspended for a year and will give her up spot on the Olympic team after testing positive for marijuana.
The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency announced on Thursday that the 27-year-old Lee tested positive for tetrahydrocannabinol acid, a marijuana metabolite, at the Olympic Team Trials in Iowa City on April 21. ‘snipped’
What a world.
do the words ” performance enhancing” no longer apply to banned drugs for athletes?
.
.
Frankly I’d enjoy seeing the governing body of elite level athletes establish that cannabis is a performance enhancing substance. It would certainly monkey wrench the “amotivational syndrome” bullcrap.
Aside from that it most certainly can be performance enhancing, IMHO of course. It gives you just enough to be able to “play through the pain”. Elite level athletes are frequently separated between gold and ignominy by a single step or a 1/100th of a second. What were Michael Phelps gold winning times in his Olympic performances vs those who came in 2nd? We all remember Lance Mackey and his very determined team of dogsled companions and how the governing board of the Iditarod instituted urine testing for the human mushers. I’ve often thought they should have given his dogs the urine tests. After all, it’s the dogs who are running through the snow in bare feet while pulling several hundred pounds of dogsled. Sure, the musher makes a difference at the margins but on the basis of relative comfort which would you rather do, pull or drive?
No discussion of K-9 drug searches would be complete without a rendition of George Clinton’s classic piece, ‘U.S. Custom Coast Guard Dope Dog’:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-ZLX4PpEso
OT breaking news on PBS:
Michigan MMJ patient has conviction for possession of one oz. of cannabis overturned after two lower courts upheld the conviction. Now faces a fresh hurdle to decide if his use at the time of arrest was “medicinal or recreational.”
I kid you not.
.
.
It really looks like the Michigan Supreme Court is staffed with people who care about the law, unlike the lower Courts and local level authorities. I really wasn’t too hopeful before they started ruling. Why was I pessimistic? Because they’re flippin’ elected, that’s why. Then again perhaps they know how to read a poll, unlike they’re elected counterparts in the executive branch.
http://judgepedia.org/index.php/Michigan_Supreme_Court_elections,_2008
Holy shit.
That’s it? Just Holy shit? Could you be more specific? Or is this just an unexpected on topic comment related to Pete’s post above?
Unfortunately there was no way to communicate my fish mouthing that accompanied my reaction above. The instant event was so far beyond the outer limits reasonably expected events that it left me virtually speechless. For crying out loud DC, they fucking admitted it. Our resident troll wasn’t out in left field with his comment about the blue line being disrespected. I’d have chosen a different adjective but that doesn’t make his inaccurate. Any way you slice it and regardless of the ultimate outcome it’s a friggin’ black swan.
———-
In other news my dentist told me to quit using Listerine because the ethanol in it has it being “associated” with oral cancer. IIRC it’s the very same type of ethanol that is in whiskey, wine, beer, etc.
Jes’ checkin’ Duncan. I am frankly astonished myself that the code of silence was so flagrantly violated. It should be front page news, all over the country. How many people have had their property forfeit due to outright theft? That make the highway patrols in this country look like little more than legal Highwaymen.
Really who gives a shit. Police are the law men.if they think ur up to no good then they are right.police are not dumb criminals are dumb.so fuck marijuana and fuck you.drug dog sniffs are legal get fucking used to it. They’re justifiyed. Don’t break the law and u won’t go to jail simple as that. Follow the rules.the 4th admendement shouldn’t apply to private citizins anyways. It only applys to governement agencys. You work for the governement.not vice versa. Fucking tweekers piss me off.go fuck a monkey.
That takes a lot of guts because unfortunately the department is going to make these cops’ lives miserable.
The plaintiffs in the Nevada Highway Patrol case had to skip the entire Nevada state employee internal-complaint process and file a lawsuit in federal court. That says much about Nevada and its government.
Being cops, however, the plaintiffs probably accumulated evidence to back their accusations, as in the case of this New York officer:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/nyregion/whistle-blower-police-officer-had-backup-secret-recordings.html
Big Rig Butters……..There is something seriously wrong with your thought process…..Almost all posts on this site are intelligent and thought provoking….I don’t understand why you bother with this forum….I suggest romper room.
We try to keep him locked up in the attic but darkcycle keeps forgetting to latch the door after he feeds him.
we need to steal all of dark’s extra food.
Hey! If I don’t FEED him he just makes MORE noise. And I latched that door. So if he’s down stairs rummaging around in the refrigerator it’s not my fault. Duncan, you need to stop going up there looking for squirrels. Pete doesn’t have any squirrels, just Wiggles. You know Wiggles is up there and you just do it to tease him. Now stop.
Too late Clay…somebody already ate my Funyuns.
Woohoo, that is pretty cool to hear. Puts a big smile on my face.