Another case raises the question whether police steal cocaine that is in evidence and then leave talcum powder in place of the stolen cocaine? Some sniffer dogs were mis-trained to detect cocaine that was borrowed from the evidence room, until someone discovered that the "cocaine" was talcum powder. 

Police discontinue drug-training exercise

Man incorrectly charged with crime after cops forget narcotics placed in car to test dogs

By Frank Geary of the Las Vegas Review-Journal

Las Vegas police officers this week will end a long-standing police dog-training practice of placing narcotics inside the vehicles of law-abiding motorists.

For nearly 13 years, Las Vegas officers who work with drug-sniffing dogs had placed police-confiscated narcotics in people's vehicles to test their dogs' ability to sniff out hidden drugs.

The training exercise is common in police agencies nationwide.

A dog is often dispatched to a traffic stop if an officer suspects there are narcotics in a vehicle.

During a true drug search, or after a search is completed, the canine officer would place bags of heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine or marijuana in the vehicle as part of the staged exercise.

In response to a recent incident in which a man was incorrectly charged with a crime, the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada has said the training procedure is inappropriate, and Sheriff Bill Young said last week that the practice will be temporarily terminated.

But canine officers in Las Vegas and police-dog experts insist the training is essential. They say stopping it could put the department at risk if ill-equipped dogs alert on scents other than narcotics.

"We want to expose our dogs to as many different environments as possible," said Las Vegas canine officer Jim Seebock. "We're asking our dogs to go find drugs in filthy conditions, so, if we trained them in a clean environment, then we wouldn't know if they would perform."

The officers acknowledged that not many in the public know they routinely placed illegal drugs in the vehicles of law-abiding citizens.

The training exercise came to light recently after a canine officer forgot to retrieve cocaine from the vehicle of a man who was later charged with drug possession after other investigators found the forgotten drugs in his car.

The motorist, Mark Lilly, was arrested at the scene after he tried to sell fake drugs to an undercover officer. His car was searched after he had been arrested for violating a law that forbids selling fake drugs.

With assistance from the ACLU, Lilly filed a lawsuit against the police department earlier this month. The lawsuit claims he was falsely charged with drug possession.

The lawsuit, which seeks damages in excess of $10,000, also claims the arresting officers violated Lilly's constitutional rights and that the department has a history of inadequately investigating wrongdoing by officers.

Allen Lichtenstein, counsel for the ACLU, said involving citizens' vehicles in dog training sets the stage for police abuse and devastating mistakes like the one that occurred in Lilly's case.

"It's a bad practice. It should cease immediately," Lichtenstein said. "A good rule of thumb is that police should not put drugs in the cars or other property of civilians. There is a potential for all kinds of problems, and it is unnecessary."

The lawsuit came after members of the police department's Citizen Review Board recommended that canine officer David Newton be suspended without pay and that other officers involved in Lilly's arrest be terminated.

Andrea Beckman, director of the Review Board, said last week that board members who reviewed the case are very concerned about the training method.

"The feeling of the board is that there is a grave concern where training exercises are being done during a live investigation," Beckman said. "There is the risk of a mistake. There is the problem of Mr. Lilly potentially driving off with the Metro (police) drugs in the back of his car."

Similar problems haven't surfaced during the past 13 years. But after the Lilly case, Young said he determined that the dangers of the exercise outweigh its benefits.

"Because an officer failed to retrieve a training aid, we have had two other officers accused of making a false arrest. We have people questioning our integrity, and a lot of people question the value, or the need, to place illegal narcotics in a vehicle when we are dealing with a criminal suspect," Young said. "It's a matter of best practices. Could we have avoided all of this by changing a training practice?"

The officers assigned to the canine unit's six drug-sniffing dogs carry heroine, cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana with them on patrol.

Each officer carries a four-gram, 14-gram and 28-gram bag of each drug for use in training. Each drug is kept inside a mason jar, and all of the jars are secured inside a locker in the officer's SUV.

The 14 officers and two sergeants in the canine unit each ride with a patrol dog, either a German shepherd or Belgian malinois. Six of the officers also are accompanied by a drug-sniffing canine, which are hunting breeds like Labradors, malinois and springer spaniels.

The narcotics, which are confiscated from suspects in drug cases, are monitored regularly by the officers' superiors and the police crime lab, the officers said.

A supervisor weighs each officer's narcotics monthly to make certain the weight hasn't changed, and the purity or quality of each drug is tested by lab technicians once a year, Sgt. Jay Carlson said.

"We do a lot to make sure our training aids are accounted for," said Carlson, who has been with the canine unit since 1992. "There is no way I can take out my cocaine and replace it. I will get caught."

As a result of the controversy surrounding Lilly's arrest, police started labeling the bag as property of the department. The notice includes the officer's name and phone number in case the training tool is misplaced.

Lt. Kent Bitsko, who oversees the canine unit, said the Lilly incident was a mistake and that better controls are in place as a result, but that similar problems still could arise in the future. Nobody is perfect, he said.

"Our controls are better now than they have ever been, and four years from now they will be even better," Bitsko said. "The shame of it is that it takes something bad to happen to bring it to our attention."

Terry Fleck, deputy sheriff for the Eldorado County sheriff's office in Northern California and a member of the United States Police Canine Association, has trained police dogs all over the country for years.

He said Las Vegas' canine unit is considered one of the best.

Fleck said that training canines during traffic stops is an essential aspect of any good police-dog program. Dogs won't respond appropriately if they are trained, for example, to search officers' private vehicles, cars in a junkyard or some other staged, controlled setting.

To do their job well, the dogs must be able to distinguish the scents of illegal narcotics from myriad odors, such as beer cans, motor oil, perfume and groceries.

And the dogs must learn to locate drugs despite real-life distractions, such as the noise of traffic and strangers looking on.

"It's like night and day," Fleck said of dogs who receive training during traffic stops and those who don't. "If he is distracted by the cars whizzing by or the people or the McDonald's wrapper or whatever is in the car, without the acclimation training, they are going to be distracted just like you would be."

Bob Eden, a canine officer in Delta, British Columbia, who founded the Eden Consulting Group, which trains police dogs for other agencies, said dogs are smart enough to distinguish a rehearsed training exercise from a drug search simulated under real-life circumstances.

If the dogs don't receive in-the-field training, the dog might get lazy and become unreliable when it comes time to find real drugs, he said.

"To get more acclimated to the real-life situation, we want to get them out and give them as much variety as possible so they're acclimated to real world noises, scents and distractions," Eden said.

COPS PLANT POT ?  FLWeekly V 29 # 25 June 19 2004 - the attempted murder retrial Andrews 4th DCA D1328 shows the judge finds that cops intended to kill Andrews before he was stopped, & planted pot in car. 

From 2007: Documents Reveal: Cops Planted Pot on 92-Year Old Woman They Killed in Botched Drug Raid. Atlanta resident Kathryn Johnston's death has finally been exposed to be a case of police coverup in clear example of the insanity of the war on drugs. http://www.alternet.org/drugs/51151/

*********************

Cops steal cocaine and leave talcum powder?  Are they looking for a thief? Maybe. Did villains get away with it? Maybe. Should you be concerned about police?

Talcum dog team leave red faces
Padraic Murphy
21may05

POLICE have described the substitution of talcum powder for cocaine in the training of Victorian sniffer dogs as an "embarrassing administrative bungle".

However, despite downplaying yesterday's revelations in The Australian, Assistant Commissioner Paul Evans could not rule out police corruption after confirming three separate inquiries were under way.

Mr Evans admitted seven of the state's elite drug sniffer dogs had to be retrained after spending more than five months on Melbourne's streets unable to track cocaine because they were mistakenly trained to detect the drug with talcum powder.

He said initial investigation had indicated the talcum powder may have been mislabelled as cocaine by police, but conceded that there may be a more sinister explanation.

"This is an embarrassing incident ... That's why we are having a full investigation. We need to drill down and find out what's going on," Mr Evans said.

Police discovered they were using talcum powder to train the dogs to detect cocaine during an internal audit, Mr Evans said.

"The good news is this has been picked up early by our internal processes. We also expect to be able to quickly track down any lost babies."

Mr Evans said police had not charged anyone with the possession of misidentified talcum powder, but conceded it was possible the dogs had failed to detect the presence of cocaine on suspects.

  The City's brief begins with the bold declaration that "[l]ocal governments need an opinion that, without question, allows non-discriminatory, low-level magnetometer searches at large gatherings." Appellees' Brief at 13. Citing nothing more than a single case from 1980, the City contends that "[p]ost September 11, 2001, this Court can determine [that] the preventive measure of a magnetometer at large gatherings is constitutional as a matter of law." Id. (citing Donovan v. Dewey, 452 U.S. 594, 606 (1980)).

  This argument is troubling. While the threat of terrorism is omnipresent, we cannot use it as the basis for restricting the scope of the Fourth Amendment's protections in any large gathering of people. In the absence of some reason to believe that international terrorists would target or infiltrate this protest, there is no basis for using September 11 as an excuse for searching the protestors.

  Even putting aside the City's ill-advised and groundless reference to September 11, its demand for the unbridled power to perform "magnetometer searches at [all] large gatherings" is untenable. The text of the Fourth Amendment contains no exception for large gatherings of people. . . .