4 ms·
It's in the article. The 93% in that study includes a 59% true positive (of 93%, presumably) success rate. We can't know how many true or false negatives there
by jeremysmyth 11y ago
It's in the article. The 93% in that study includes a 59% true positive (of 93%, presumably) success rate. We can't know how many true or false negatives there are because those searches aren't actually carried out, so out of every hundred cars stopped for a dogsniff, 55% (59% of 93%) are found to be carrying drugs.
More worryingly, that also means that out of every hundred cars stopped, 38 are wastefully searched by police (after getting probable cause from the positive dog alert) without finding drugs. From the article, a search takes about 45 minutes and carries a bunch of other risks for occupants of suspected cars (e.g. civil forfeiture, overenthusiastically trigger-happy LEOs), so this is pretty bad situation, not just in wasted time and cost, for both the car occupants and the police force.
One slightly positive thing I'll take from this: Over 50% of cars that are dogged have drugs, and I sincerely doubt that over 50% of cars (on average) have drugs, so in this particular study it appears that police have a better than random chance of guessing which cars have drugs. It's not a very positive thing though, because civilized countries that operate under the rule of law cannot permit law enforcement to operate on guesswork. This is underlined by the fact that the article mentions that the false positive rate rose to something like 80% for latino drivers.
- gburt 11y agoSorry - I edited my post multiple times after posting it to clean it up and increase quality. Some of your response (especially the first paragraph) is now confusing. That was my fault. I agree with you mostly - especially on the discussion of what "probable cause" should be defined as and what constitutes a "random" search, as just an example of some of the ethical issues of interest here. That is a debate to have and even one I think this community is well equipped to discuss, but it was not something I was trying to comment on. I was only making the point that it wasn't fair to jump on the 93% as though it was representative of the problem. I am not taking any ethical or defensive position of drug dogs here.