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At present, courts have not recognized that K-9s can and will false alert. I testified in court to this behavior for the first time in the history of our criminal court system about six months ago. We won the case because of thelength of time it took for the dog to arrive, but the judge never ruled on the false alert.
Punishment for a kop causing his/her dog to false alert? Kops caught doing this will probably never be punished because the argument will be made that the dog misbehaved, so why should the human be punished?
I think what will eventually happen is the Supreme Court will rule police K-9s may be used to assist officers in locating drugs but will not allow the dog's alert to be probable cause for search. I think once the courts have been given the proof that
there are too many ways for a dog to make a mistake, this will happen. The courts did not have that information when ruling years ago because there was no opposing evidence at the time.
Any time a citizen is about to be checked with a drug dog, the citizen should announce he/she is familiar with what a false alert looks like and demand to watch the handler and the dog. This worked for me about four months ago. The K-9 did not alert on his first trip around my Suburban so upon making a second lap, I proclaimed, "This is where he's going to make he dog false alert." Upon hearing this, the kop immediately pulled the dog off my auto and ended the search.
