Sniffer dogs not so effective as top cop claims

As young people at music festivals continue to die at alarming rates, harm reduction experts call for pill testing while police and the NSW government dig in and defend the use of sniffer dogs followed by strip-searches.

But Police Commissioner Mick Fuller has misrepresented their effectiveness, claiming that the dogs successfully found drugs in 40% of indications. Never mind that many of these are for cannabis, the world's safest drug with a death rate of zero – he's wrong anyway.

ABC Fact check looked into it with the help of data wrung from the police via multiple Freedom of Information requests from them and Greens MLC David Shoebridge. It looks like the true rate is significantly less, at 24.3%.

And everyone seems to have forgotten that the dogs were brought in under the pretence they would target dealers rather than users.

The fact-check says, "However, evidence from as early as the 2006 NSW Ombudsman's review of the use of drug detection dogs suggest that the dogs have been ineffective in targeting supply offences.

Of more than 10,000 drug dog indications during the review period, 141 identified a trafficable amount of drugs (1.4 per cent). Just 19 (0.19 per cent) led to a successful prosecution for supply."

So the credibility gap from NSW cops has shrunk from 40% to 24% to, arguably .19%.

What a great way to spend taxpayers' dollars.

Almost 300 children strip-searched in NSW Police State

Police in Kings Cross clearly targeting an Indigenous man
with a sniffer dog, pulling it close to the man by its lead.
The dog made no indication.

NSW is descending further into something resembling a police state, with thousands of citizens being strip-searched in the name of drugs prohibition – a regime with little or no rational justification.

Most people searched are young or Indigenous, according to a report in The Sydney Morning Herald.

"The number of NSW Police searches has increased by almost 50 per cent in the four years from financial year 2014-15 to 2017-18," says the report. Almost 300 children, one as young as 10, were searched.

Two-thirds of the searches turn up nothing, and among the "successful" searches police say they have found items such as vehicle number plates.

I'm pretty sure I would be able to detect number plates on a person without stripping them.

Other searches turned up such deadly items as "art" or "stationery".

The justification for the searches can only be described as dodgy: "Under NSW law a police officer can carry out a strip search if it is necessary for the purposes of the search and if the seriousness and urgency of the circumstances make it necessary," reports the SMH.

I'm not sure how "serious" or "urgent" it is to detect someone carrying an amount of say, cannabis, so small it can't be detected without stripping the citizen. Or stationery for that matter (I'm guessing that may have been a case of shoplifting, another "serious" and "urgent" matter it would seem).

Most of the drugs-related searches are triggered by indications from a sniffer dog. In other words, the search victim had been doing nothing wrong and was apparently no threat to others.