Australian Cops Say Their Unreliable Drug Dogs Will Decide Who Gets To Attend Music Festivals

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the 4/5ths-wrong,-1/5-creeping-authoritarianism dept

The New South Wales Police think they’ve figured out this whole drugs-and-music thing. To slow the entry of drugs (and drug users) to events where drugs (and drug users) might be found, they’re going to station their most unreliable officers at the entrance and have them point out the people who should be forbidden from entering. From the NSW Police Facebook post:

Police are warning patrons attending the ‘Above and Beyond’ music festival at Sydney this weekend that drug detection dogs will be at the venue.

The event will run from 6pm until midnight on Saturday (9 June 2018), at the Sydney Showground.

Police warn that drug detection dogs will patrol the venue and can detect the presence of prohibited drugs or someone who has recently had drugs on them. If a dog makes an indication you will be denied entry.

[…]

Police will exclude any person from the venue that the drug dog indicates has or who has recently had drugs on them, regardless of whether drugs are located.

This is great news for all those pro-Drug War types who think the innocent are just as guilty as the guilty until proven otherwise. Drug dogs are much better at detecting handler cues than detecting drugs, so it’s inevitable this deployment of K-9 units will result in paying customers being screwed out of their money by four-legged animals.

Drug dogs have outrageous failure rates, considering law enforcement (and some courts) hold them up to be “probable cause on four legs.” It’s quite possibly even worse in Australia.

Last year, of the 15,779 searches conducted after police-dog identification, no drugs were found in 11,694 cases. Drugs were found in 4085 cases, resulting in a ”false positive” rate of 74 per cent, said the Greens MP David Shoebridge, who obtained the figures

Those stats are from 2010. There’s every reason to believe accuracy has improv…

A record 80 per cent of sniffer dog searches for drugs resulted in ”false positives” this year, figures show.

The figures obtained from the state government in response to parliamentary questions on notice show 14,102 searches were conducted after a dog sat next to a person, indicating they might be carrying drugs. But, in 11,248 cases, no drugs were found.

So, there’s an 80% chance festival goers who get booted by a dog won’t have any drugs on them, or near them, or only in residue form. And the determination can’t be challenged by showing officers you’re not carrying any drugs. If a dog says you’re not allowed to enjoy the music festival, despite having shelled out at least $128, the dog’s call is final.

This is a very police state-ish thing to do. It allows police to arbitrarily boot people from venues, depriving them of both their freedom and their money. And it’s a coward’s way out. Rather than put their own reputations on the line, NSW police are simply going to shrug people express their anger at being kicked out of a concert for drugs they don’t have and say a dog told them to do it.

Filed Under: australia, drug dogs, music festivals