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> “You can be on a public street and scan your suspect’s yard.” Well, if that ain't a great way to manufacture a warrant. What exactly is wrong with cadaver d

> “You can be on a public street and scan your suspect’s yard.” Well, if that ain't a great way to manufacture a warrant. What exactly is wrong with cadaver dogs, anyway? I'm guessing it's that cadaver dogs actually work on scientific principles. (Edit: dogs also can't smell a body from across the street. At least, I don't think they can.)

lupire 5y ago
Alert dogs respond to handler signals and are used to fabricate probable cause, much like witching.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  There should be a discouraging compensation paid to the suspect if their property is searched and nothing found. An "apologies for your trouble / time", and of course a hearty compensation for any damage done.
  - AlexandrB 5y ago
    Paid by whom? In cases of police getting sued after a wrongful death, the municipality typically pays the bill. The police budget is unaffected. In such a system there's little incentive for police departments to be careful with which property they search, even if the owner is compensated.
    - MPSimmons 5y ago
      >The police budget is unaffected I would have to imagine that after several such incidents, the police budget would begin to be affected.
  - 0des 5y ago
    That would be gamed in a heartbeat.
    - LanceH 5y ago
      It could only be gamed if dogs aren't accurately finding bodies.
      - SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
        Dogs aren’t accurately finding bodies and are often deployed even when cops know no body is present (such as a car). Now what?
        0des 5y ago
        Were you born after the 9/11 attacks?
        thesuitonym 5y ago
        Maybe cops shouldn't be doing that.
        LanceH 5y ago
        Exactly. Someone suggested we compensate people who are searched when nothing is found. The next person says that would immediately be gamed. I'm saying it would only be gamed if dog searches don't work. Personally, I would like to see some sort of registration before an animal or device is used for a search. A search would be invalid unless it is applied for. Then the results must be entered upon completion (or assumed to be a failed search). Then we could see the results and how accurate these animals or "scientific" tests are in practice. Instead we have warrants essentially backed by dogs who have no track record. The police are allowed to say, "the dog alerted, so drugs must have been present at some point and must have been moved." This has even led to further searches for where the drugs were moved to. All without anyone knowing the actual accuracy or effectiveness of a dog's search ability -- only that it was "certified".
        SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
        It gets worse than that actually. There was a case where a cadaver dog was well regarded for always being able to find something. This was because the owner kept shards of bone and said the dog found this bone shard at the search. In your record keeping this dog would have 100% success rate and “prove” cadaver dogs really work.
  - SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
    What happens if it becomes a “the body must’ve been here at some point and then moved”? For example cadaver dogs have been used on cars, houses, etc. with clearly no body precisely to put under suspicion that a body was under temporary storage.
- hacktavist24 5y ago
  True, and that is a problem if peoples' properties get dug up, as a sibling comment notes. But, in contrast to drug dogs, where an alert creates probable cause for a search where things other than drugs can frequently be found, cadaver dogs typically either find remains or not. There generally isn't much else one can find digging around in the dirt that's incriminating, so, from a legal/justice POV, the harm of a false alert from a cadaver dog is much less than that from a false alert from a drug dog.
  - SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
    I heavily disagree with this notion. Cadaver dogs falsely alerting can tip police into arresting a suspect and bringing them in for questioning (this can often be newsworthy and cause one’s neighbors, community, the internet, and employment to also treat the person with suspicion or assume guilt) , or focusing on a suspect while not chasing other leads for an actual killer, or be used as circumstantial evidences at a trial even when no body is found. There have been cases where the cadaver dog alerts around a car, with clearly no body to be found, and this is used as circumstantial evidence that the car must’ve been used to carry a body.
    - lnxg33k1 5y ago
      This is one of the thoughts every now and then makes me happy to don't live in a society affine to the US culture, and sometimes I can't understand how people can't see how this messes everything up, this attitude of terminating the life of those who have just been suspected, by giving for granted that everyone is already guilty before the trial even starts is crazy, and makes the whole country more blackmailable, I can't imagine the amount of people who gave up to blackmail just because otherwise their life would be trashed But to get back on point, what should the police do? They have an investigation to do and the dog trying to say something? Should we avoid questioning people just because society is fucked up?
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        Assuming people are guilty on mere suspicion isn't a US thing. It's a rich suburbanites who are never subjected to baseless fishing thing.
dTal 5y ago
Cadaver dogs were used to locate the remains of murdered journalist Kim Wall, which were in plastic bags at the bottom of Køge Bay. I'm pretty sure smelling a body across the street wouldn't present a challenge. Dog noses are insane.
- Enginerrrd 5y ago
  Smells like parallel construction to me... Dog noses ARE insane, but they're probably not THAT insane.
  - dTal 5y ago
    Your skepticism is unwarranted - it's real. There's a documentary about it. Small droplets of rotting fat float up to the surface, where the dog can smell it. They had to account for ocean currents and the rate at which the bubbles rise in order to sufficiently narrow the search area. They couldn't find it at first, because they misunderstood the mechanism and assumed it was gas bubbles, which obviously rise at a different rate. Besides - where else would they have gotten the information from? She was killed on a submarine with no one else aboard but her murderer, and he wasn't talking.
    - davidwritesbugs 5y ago
      So dumping my bodies at sea is not safe? This is surprising bad news, thanks Season 1 Dexter.
      - addingnumbers 5y ago
        You must have stopped at Season 1, season 2 started with all those bodies found in the first episode.
  - quxpar 5y ago
    Dogs smell in stereo with detailed temporal information. They know which way a deer passed and how many days ago.
  - 5y ago
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> What exactly is wrong with cadaver dogs, anyway? What is their false positive and false negative rates?

lupire 5y ago

Alert dogs respond to handler signals and are used to fabricate probable cause, much like witching.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
There should be a discouraging compensation paid to the suspect if their property is searched and nothing found. An "apologies for your trouble / time", and of course a hearty compensation for any damage done.
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  Paid by whom? In cases of police getting sued after a wrongful death, the municipality typically pays the bill. The police budget is unaffected. In such a system there's little incentive for police departments to be careful with which property they search, even if the owner is compensated.
  - MPSimmons 5y ago
    >The police budget is unaffected I would have to imagine that after several such incidents, the police budget would begin to be affected.
- 0des 5y ago
  That would be gamed in a heartbeat.
  - LanceH 5y ago
    It could only be gamed if dogs aren't accurately finding bodies.
    - SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
      Dogs aren’t accurately finding bodies and are often deployed even when cops know no body is present (such as a car). Now what?
      - 0des 5y ago
        Were you born after the 9/11 attacks?
      - thesuitonym 5y ago
        Maybe cops shouldn't be doing that.
      - LanceH 5y ago
        Exactly. Someone suggested we compensate people who are searched when nothing is found. The next person says that would immediately be gamed. I'm saying it would only be gamed if dog searches don't work. Personally, I would like to see some sort of registration before an animal or device is used for a search. A search would be invalid unless it is applied for. Then the results must be entered upon completion (or assumed to be a failed search). Then we could see the results and how accurate these animals or "scientific" tests are in practice. Instead we have warrants essentially backed by dogs who have no track record. The police are allowed to say, "the dog alerted, so drugs must have been present at some point and must have been moved." This has even led to further searches for where the drugs were moved to. All without anyone knowing the actual accuracy or effectiveness of a dog's search ability -- only that it was "certified".
        SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
        It gets worse than that actually. There was a case where a cadaver dog was well regarded for always being able to find something. This was because the owner kept shards of bone and said the dog found this bone shard at the search. In your record keeping this dog would have 100% success rate and “prove” cadaver dogs really work.
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
  What happens if it becomes a “the body must’ve been here at some point and then moved”? For example cadaver dogs have been used on cars, houses, etc. with clearly no body precisely to put under suspicion that a body was under temporary storage.
hacktavist24 5y ago
True, and that is a problem if peoples' properties get dug up, as a sibling comment notes. But, in contrast to drug dogs, where an alert creates probable cause for a search where things other than drugs can frequently be found, cadaver dogs typically either find remains or not. There generally isn't much else one can find digging around in the dirt that's incriminating, so, from a legal/justice POV, the harm of a false alert from a cadaver dog is much less than that from a false alert from a drug dog.
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
  I heavily disagree with this notion. Cadaver dogs falsely alerting can tip police into arresting a suspect and bringing them in for questioning (this can often be newsworthy and cause one’s neighbors, community, the internet, and employment to also treat the person with suspicion or assume guilt) , or focusing on a suspect while not chasing other leads for an actual killer, or be used as circumstantial evidences at a trial even when no body is found. There have been cases where the cadaver dog alerts around a car, with clearly no body to be found, and this is used as circumstantial evidence that the car must’ve been used to carry a body.
  - lnxg33k1 5y ago
    This is one of the thoughts every now and then makes me happy to don't live in a society affine to the US culture, and sometimes I can't understand how people can't see how this messes everything up, this attitude of terminating the life of those who have just been suspected, by giving for granted that everyone is already guilty before the trial even starts is crazy, and makes the whole country more blackmailable, I can't imagine the amount of people who gave up to blackmail just because otherwise their life would be trashed But to get back on point, what should the police do? They have an investigation to do and the dog trying to say something? Should we avoid questioning people just because society is fucked up?
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      Assuming people are guilty on mere suspicion isn't a US thing. It's a rich suburbanites who are never subjected to baseless fishing thing.

dTal 5y ago

Cadaver dogs were used to locate the remains of murdered journalist Kim Wall, which were in plastic bags at the bottom of Køge Bay. I'm pretty sure smelling a body across the street wouldn't present a challenge. Dog noses are insane.

Enginerrrd 5y ago
Smells like parallel construction to me... Dog noses ARE insane, but they're probably not THAT insane.
- dTal 5y ago
  Your skepticism is unwarranted - it's real. There's a documentary about it. Small droplets of rotting fat float up to the surface, where the dog can smell it. They had to account for ocean currents and the rate at which the bubbles rise in order to sufficiently narrow the search area. They couldn't find it at first, because they misunderstood the mechanism and assumed it was gas bubbles, which obviously rise at a different rate. Besides - where else would they have gotten the information from? She was killed on a submarine with no one else aboard but her murderer, and he wasn't talking.
  - davidwritesbugs 5y ago
    So dumping my bodies at sea is not safe? This is surprising bad news, thanks Season 1 Dexter.
    - addingnumbers 5y ago
      You must have stopped at Season 1, season 2 started with all those bodies found in the first episode.
- quxpar 5y ago
  Dogs smell in stereo with detailed temporal information. They know which way a deer passed and how many days ago.
- 5y ago

matheusmoreira 5y ago

> What exactly is wrong with cadaver dogs, anyway? What is their false positive and false negative rates?