DOGGONE IT
He advises replacing retired dogs with dogs trained not to detect cannabis at all – the path that most police departments and training schools are following, according to the officers and experts consulted for this article. The New Normal of Ignoring Weed In most cases, deploying a marijuana- introduces a costly liability. A dog’s handler won’t know whether a cannabis-sensitive nose has detected someone’s dime bag of legal weed or a kilo of fentanyl. “I wish we could read their minds,” Chief Klein says. “The dog may be alerting on marijuana, but we just don’t know that, so we’re unable to use just his alert to search the motor vehicle for controlled substances.” In Klein’s state of Colorado, current case law – pending appeal – permits the use of marijuana- trained dogs only when the handler can claim a reasonable suspicion that there’s something other than marijuana inside the vehicle. It was in anticipation of case laws like this that Klein started cutting back onTulo’s deployments. “It kind of forced our hand,” he adds, “the fact that he would alert on marijuana.” The marijuana-trained dogs of the future will be specialists – like arson dogs, who are trained to detect the source of a fire’s first spark, or the airport-based Beagle Brigades, whose training in exotic produce prepares them to patrol the international arrival gates. trained dog in a state or county where marijuana is no longer against the law
The cost of replacing cannabis-trained dogs ... will be negligible compared to the cost of so many lost cases. School resource officers stalk students’ lockers with cannabis-trained German shepherds – policing drug possession among arguably the one demographic by whom liberalization would be most welcome, but for whom it would be least advised. For the most part, drug-detection dogs who would have been trained on cannabis a canine generation ago just won’t learn the scent at all in the coming years, or so predicts former trainer and current criminology professor Charlie Mesloh. Federally – and, for the time being, in 15 of the 50 states – marijuana possession in any amount remains illegal. But no police department, even in those 15 mostly southern and midwestern states, will want to incur the costs of falling behind the legalization curve. “The problem is going to be in the courtroom,” Mesloh explains. Departments would rather not lose case after case when they find themselves unable to prove whether a dog initially hit upon a legal or an illegal scent. “If the defense lawyer is any good, they’re going to raise a reasonable doubt – and that’s enough to dismantle the case.” The cost of replacing cannabis-trained dogs – even those still in their prime and therefore worth tens of thousands of dollars, per Mesloh’s estimate – will be negligible
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March 2019
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