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Help End The Use of Police Dogs for Drug Searches
  1. Signatures
    96 out of 10,000
    Petitioning
    1. The President of the United States (+ 2 others)
      Petitioning
      close
      • The President of the United States
      • The U.S. Senate
      • The U.S. House of Representatives
  2. Created By
    John Powell
    Chicago, IL
About this Petition Petition Letter Petition Updates

Recently, multiple studies have shown the practice of using police dogs to be little more than a way for Law Enforcement to violate and intimidate the citizens of the United States.  What's more, the dogs are used more often on minority groups and the youth.

For years it has been claimed that dogs trained for sniffing out drugs are an accurate and legitimate means to violate a citizens fourth amendment rights.  On January 24, 2005, the U.S. Supreme court decided that the sole indication by a trained dog was evidence enough to search a home, vehicle, or person (Illinois v. Caballes).  Without any evidence other than the bark or point of a german shepard, your privacy has gone.

The Chicato Tribune has recently exposed the numbers of 877 suburban Chicago-area (no Chicago data was available) alerts from 2007-2009, in which the percentage of alerts in which drugs were found per the number of alerts was:

46% for African-Americans, 49% for Caucasians, 27% for Hispanics, 42% for Others, with a 44% overall number.  

Another study by UC Davis published by the SF Gate, has revealed that drug dogs react simply to their handlers emotions.  After telling handlers that there may be up to three target scents in each room, with two rooms having red construction paper where the 'target scents' were to be located.

One room had no indicator, the second room had a piece of red paper on a cabinet, the third room had decoy scents, two sausages, and two tennis balls out of view, and the fourth room had a piece of red paper at the location of hidden decoy scents, two sausages and two tennis balls.

While there should have been no alerts in any room, but there were alerts in all of them, and more where the red paper indicated there was('nt) a scent.  

With this new light shed on the inaccuracy of drug dogs, let this be a new call for the upheld decision of Illinois v. Caballes to be fully overturned, and for us to take our Fourth Amendment rights back from the our cannine friends.

Why People Are Signing
Recent Signatures

Stop The Use of Drug Dogs Across The Nation

Greetings,

We are asking you to declare illegal, the use of dogs to help police violate our Fourth Amendment right to privacy.
For years it has been claimed that dogs trained for sniffing out drugs are an accurate and legitimate means to violate a citizens fourth amendment rights. On January 24, 2005, the U.S. Supreme court decided that the sole indication by a trained dog was evidence enough to search a home, vehicle, or person (Illinois v. Caballes). Without any evidence other than the bark or point of a german shepard, your privacy has gone.

The Chicato Tribune has recently exposed the numbers of 877 suburban Chicago-area (no Chicago data was available) alerts from 2007-2009, in which the percentage of alerts in which drugs were found per the number of alerts was:

46% for African-Americans, 49% for Caucasians, 27% for Hispanics, 42% for Others, with a 44% overall number.

Another study by UC Davis published by the SF Gate, has revealed that drug dogs react simply to their handlers emotions.

With this, we ask you to make illegal the use of drug dogs to help Law Enforcement Officials violate our Fourth Amendment right to privacy.

[Your name]

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