SoH Mercy

the-transfeminine-mystique:

the-transfeminine-mystique:

Conflating “public” with “right on the street in front of my children” renders invisible the forces of capital and homophobic repression, and does the police’s propagandistic job for them. “Public” and “private” are only neatly separated when one has independent access to property.

If your system of ethics assumes that everybody has a single-family home with a white picket fence, then I don’t know what to tell you other than it’s just replicating the ethics of the capitalist American state.

Crimes which differentiate between public/private space are a way to control the existences of marginalized people, maintain property rights, and uphold the prison industrial complex!

Note how urination is not a crime, but public urination is. ie it’s a crime to have bodily needs while also not having access to your own personal private in-home bathroom and not having the means to afford to use a “public” bathroom for example a pay toilet (more popular outside of the US) or business bathroom for customers only.

Apply the same to public drug use, public indecency, public nudity, public sleeping. If you get to enjoy your right to do something in your own home, you can’t make “but the children!!” claims until you’ve addressed the fact that the vast majority of people hit by these crimes again and again are going to be those without homes.

Making public existence a crime means the state gets to forcibly remove people it hates from the geographic space that “good” society occupies. That’s what jails and prisons are. That’s why it’s a massive queer rights issue when cops start wrangling up homeless trans street sex workers in the weeks leading up to Pride in major cities. That’s why it’s a disability rights issue when bathrooms are inaccessible. When public existence becomes moralized to encompass types of existences which are totally acceptable in private, it means that marginalized people must either hole up in private and never go out (see: having to plan excursions around whether bathrooms are available) or that they will be forcibly removed by being locked up for not having a private space to be.

Human rights aren’t universal if they’re bound up in property rights that are in and of themselves non-universal. It’s fucked up to appeal to the authority of these laws as if they’re actually about the social responsibility of hurting others’ feelings instead of recognizing that this line of thinking is very much a mechanism of social control and that criminality is specifically constructed to maintain state power under capitalism!

My therapist brought up this quote like “the two biggest taboos in society are sex and death” and maybe that’s a direction to interrogate the “rapists and serial killers” angle from.

If you remove the sex taboo, then the rapist matter can be handled the same way that physical assault would. For me, that makes it all the more easier to conceptualize a rehabilitation support system which does not need to remove an offender from their social space, although presumably the “rapist and serial killers” fretters are just as against physical assaulters being allowed to walk the streets.

The death taboo is a little trickier for me. Although I do firmly believe that the life of an individual transcends the life of their body, I have a hard time advocating for a universal embrace of death-as-not-to-be-feared for everybody, and I believe that it’s still important to value body-life nonetheless. I also don’t believe that adopting the pain of the victim and thus coming to terms with the weight of the horrible thing you’ve done should be a mandatory aspect of rehabilitation, and yet I struggle to think of a justification for why a killer would need to be reformed and what that reform would look like.

(Source: miseriathome)

Maybe part of the issue with regards to prison abolitionist tumblr’s propensity for having offenders be removed from the Normal Society pool and locked away Elsewhere is the faulty assumption that all interpersonal violence benefits from the victim having space away from the offender.

There are actually instances where it’s much more healing for somebody to have their violator remain a predictable presence in their life structure, versus the disruption of having them plucked out of existence and whisked off to The Place Where They Can’t Hurt You Anymore. And I don’t mean in a grooming, fawning, learned dependence, Stockholm syndrome way–I mean that people genuinely cope with interpersonal harm in different ways and for some, the predictability of that person’s presence and the control of knowing how that affects what you’re doing take precedence over any flight response.

Which, I mean, presumably the justification for having offender rehabilitation take place Elsewhere would be that the abundance of therapists in prison-abolished society would mitigate any distress the victim might feel about their violator being Elsewhere, or assuage any potential for guilt over reporting the crime and disrupting that person’s life so drastically.

Hmm…. If it’s critical that offenders still be given agency in whether they consent to exile or whether they choose rehabilitation-from-home, is it also relevant for the victim to have a say in where the offender gets to be and to what extent they get to participate in the public sphere? My instinct says that the victim’s desires aren’t actually relevant, given that tolerance for criminality needs to be a given for the system to work, and that the real-world instances of people who reform with the aid of their community instead of authorities make the offender’s continued participation in society work.

(Source: miseriathome)

This is one of those times when uplifting the voices of people who have gone to prison for violent crimes and allowing them access to community leadership positions would be excellent. Except that everybody hates those folks, as I’ve learned by having a former violent criminal as a close friend and also from the shitstorm that has been trying to defend the right of a former sex offender to publicly protest police violence.

Again, I continue to fall back to the question of “does being friends with degenerates (and not just the cool queer kinds, but also the violent criminal, sexual abuser, and right-wing kinds) make me a wooby activist?” Am I too soft for genuinely believing that all people, even violators of other people, deserve fundamental rights like agency and privacy? In my model of a prison-free society, people on an individual level have an increased tolerance for the crimes of others, and yet I worry that this is unattainable, and that perhaps reactive feelings like disgust and fury are too innate to be unlearned on a societal level.

(Source: miseriathome)

miseriathome:

…………….how to educate prison abolitionist tumblr that surveilling people, locking them inside a building (no matter how nice), and not allowing them to leave without a psychiatric clearance is still Not Good for the same fundamental reasons that prisons and psychiatric institutions are not good?

How to educate prison abolitionist tumblr that violent offenders already walk among us everyday and are deescalated and rehabilitated already through non-prison-like means of community engagement?

It’s still a prison if there are windows and couches and overseers who let you do something fun like breathe fresh air and play games every so often, that’s how psych wards are and people still rightfully identify psychiatric facilities as inhumane prison states.

…………..average folks really don’t have multiplous experience being close to violent offenders and seeing their humanity and understanding the nuance of their crimes, huh?

Pls buy me Foucault books so I can learn more about carcels myself and stop spending so much time being neurotic about people on the internet.

I’ve come to the conclusion that prison abolitionist tumblr should spend more time around media like Riverdale so they can internalize examples of violent crimes which don’t need to involve the police, which get taken care of within the community.

…this is a joke, but still, people absolutely have a schema for addressing harm on a community level without intervention by state/authoritative powers. How do convince prison abolitionist tumblr to tap into that?

…………….how to educate prison abolitionist tumblr that surveilling people, locking them inside a building (no matter how nice), and not allowing them to leave without a psychiatric clearance is still Not Good for the same fundamental reasons that prisons and psychiatric institutions are not good?

How to educate prison abolitionist tumblr that violent offenders already walk among us everyday and are deescalated and rehabilitated already through non-prison-like means of community engagement?

It’s still a prison if there are windows and couches and overseers who let you do something fun like breathe fresh air and play games every so often, that’s how psych wards are and people still rightfully identify psychiatric facilities as inhumane prison states.

…………..average folks really don’t have multiplous experience being close to violent offenders and seeing their humanity and understanding the nuance of their crimes, huh?

Pls buy me Foucault books so I can learn more about carcels myself and stop spending so much time being neurotic about people on the internet.

(Source: miseriathome)

Anonymous asked:

I understand that the prison systems are bad and most people in them should be released, but as far as far as serial killers and rapists and stuff go, are there really many better alternatives than having a few prisons still running just for those types? I’m genuinely curious about this, because a lot of the alternatives for prisons I’ve seen seem very good but leave out any way to resolve the problem or legitimately dangerous people.

gem-femme:

Yeah there’s a reason why throughout talking about this I haven’t mentioned mental hospitals and it’s because of everything you just said.

Also, I was using an overly simple example for a complex subject just to try and get a point across so I know that you have to sign a waiver to leave a hospital, I’m just saying that they do try their best to stop you and yet they are not considered prisons.

But thank you for explaining everything that I didn’t have the spoons to explain myself.

miseriathome:

Somebody who’s in a hospital for a heart attack is still allowed to leave–they typically just have to sign a waiver that acknowledges that they’re leaving against medical advice so the hospital can’t be held liable for releasing them.

Somebody who’s in a hospital on a psych hold is not allowed to leave. The parallels between psychiatric institutions and prisons have been made time and time again, most notably by philosopher Michel Foucault. A rehab center where people aren’t allowed to leave being a product of prison reform rather than prison abolition is very much how that works.

Detention in a facility which strips inhabitants of their agency in choosing to leave is by definition a carceral state, which is antithetical to prison abolition. Carceral justice is founded upon the premise that it benefits society to remove problematic actors from the public, whether that’s into a prison, onto a remote island, onto a labor farm, into a psych facility, into exile/deportation, etc. It maintains that there is a neat line between good society and bad society, and that society remains good and is at its best when the bad elements are removed. This binarism of offender/non-offender is disproven by the fact that no matter what the system is for removing harmful people from a community, more harmful people still crop up anyways. A system which allows people to be whisked away also encourages the problemitization (criminalization) of behaviors which aren’t harmful, but which people don’t want to deal with.

The shift from a carceral legal system to a community-based reformation system means keeping community matters within the community and working on reform at the community level. It does necessitate that the public become tolerant of moral ambiguity on a social level, yes, and that tends to be what people have the most trouble with. It means that for a serial killer or rapist, rehabilitation at home and a continued right to exist in the public sphere need to be options. It doesn’t mean that violent interpersonal offenders can guarantee they’ll be shielded from hostility from other individuals, especially those they’ve hurt; rather it means that nobody, no matter how heinous, should have to be torn away from the people, places, and structures they know for the good of others.

Also. Rapists by and large aren’t being jailed in the first place, and yet some do ultimately reform through non-carceral means. That demonstrates that community efforts to support and educate people do work–we’re just trying to make those environments more readily available, more effective, and more broadly based.

gem-femme:

That’s not how it works. They can’t just leave whenever they want, they have to show improvement and get to a certain point of recovery before that idea can even be visited. For example, do you call a hospital a prison because they won’t let you leave when you’ve just had a massive heart attack and still need stents put in your arteries??

maid-of-timey-wimey:

gem-femme:

Serial killers and rapists are the result of a society that doesn’t support people. Increasing access to social programs that help people take care of themselves and be supported and educate people about social justice and enact equity are part of prison and police abolition, and that would lessen the amount of serial killers and rapists that appear in our society. But that’s more of a long term remedy for that kind of crime.

But also remember that prison abolition is not rehabilitation abolition. People who commit violent crimes could still go somewhere to deal with the consequences of their actions but those places wouldn’t be prisons because prisons don’t actually rehabilitate people, they just punish people. Offenders of violent crimes would go somewhere where they could undergo intense rehabilitation that would actually help and support them. Like, in our society we treat certain people who do certain things like monsters and that ultimately turns into a self fulfilling prophecy. A serial killer who gets treated inhumanely in the prison system is not at all inclined to try to become better to atone for what they’ve done because what would be the point for them with the way our current prison system is? So yeah, the focus of prison abolition is to put more attention on actual rehabilitation.

Sorry for the ramble but I hope this at least partially answers your question.

OK but. If they can leave the rehab center whenever they want, then that wouldn’t be very effective at preventing repeated violence, would it? And if they can’t leave, then what you’re proposing is still a prison, albeit a reformed one.

Anonymous asked:

I understand that the prison systems are bad and most people in them should be released, but as far as far as serial killers and rapists and stuff go, are there really many better alternatives than having a few prisons still running just for those types? I’m genuinely curious about this, because a lot of the alternatives for prisons I’ve seen seem very good but leave out any way to resolve the problem or legitimately dangerous people.

gem-femme:

That’s not how it works. They can’t just leave whenever they want, they have to show improvement and get to a certain point of recovery before that idea can even be visited. For example, do you call a hospital a prison because they won’t let you leave when you’ve just had a massive heart attack and still need stents put in your arteries??

maid-of-timey-wimey:

gem-femme:

Serial killers and rapists are the result of a society that doesn’t support people. Increasing access to social programs that help people take care of themselves and be supported and educate people about social justice and enact equity are part of prison and police abolition, and that would lessen the amount of serial killers and rapists that appear in our society. But that’s more of a long term remedy for that kind of crime.

But also remember that prison abolition is not rehabilitation abolition. People who commit violent crimes could still go somewhere to deal with the consequences of their actions but those places wouldn’t be prisons because prisons don’t actually rehabilitate people, they just punish people. Offenders of violent crimes would go somewhere where they could undergo intense rehabilitation that would actually help and support them. Like, in our society we treat certain people who do certain things like monsters and that ultimately turns into a self fulfilling prophecy. A serial killer who gets treated inhumanely in the prison system is not at all inclined to try to become better to atone for what they’ve done because what would be the point for them with the way our current prison system is? So yeah, the focus of prison abolition is to put more attention on actual rehabilitation.

Sorry for the ramble but I hope this at least partially answers your question.

OK but. If they can leave the rehab center whenever they want, then that wouldn’t be very effective at preventing repeated violence, would it? And if they can’t leave, then what you’re proposing is still a prison, albeit a reformed one.

Somebody who’s in a hospital for a heart attack is still allowed to leave–they typically just have to sign a waiver that acknowledges that they’re leaving against medical advice so the hospital can’t be held liable for releasing them.

Somebody who’s in a hospital on a psych hold is not allowed to leave. The parallels between psychiatric institutions and prisons have been made time and time again, most notably by philosopher Michel Foucault. A rehab center where people aren’t allowed to leave being a product of prison reform rather than prison abolition is very much how that works.

Detention in a facility which strips inhabitants of their agency in choosing to leave is by definition a carceral state, which is antithetical to prison abolition. Carceral justice is founded upon the premise that it benefits society to remove problematic actors from the public, whether that’s into a prison, onto a remote island, onto a labor farm, into a psych facility, into exile/deportation, etc. It maintains that there is a neat line between good society and bad society, and that society remains good and is at its best when the bad elements are removed. This binarism of offender/non-offender is disproven by the fact that no matter what the system is for removing harmful people from a community, more harmful people still crop up anyways. A system which allows people to be whisked away also encourages the problemitization (criminalization) of behaviors which aren’t harmful, but which people don’t want to deal with.

The shift from a carceral legal system to a community-based reformation system means keeping community matters within the community and working on reform at the community level. It does necessitate that the public become tolerant of moral ambiguity on a social level, yes, and that tends to be what people have the most trouble with. It means that for a serial killer or rapist, rehabilitation at home and a continued right to exist in the public sphere need to be options. It doesn’t mean that violent interpersonal offenders can guarantee they’ll be shielded from hostility from other individuals, especially those they’ve hurt; rather it means that nobody, no matter how heinous, should have to be torn away from the people, places, and structures they know for the good of others.

Also. Rapists by and large aren’t being jailed in the first place, and yet some do ultimately reform through non-carceral means. That demonstrates that community efforts to support and educate people do work–we’re just trying to make those environments more readily available, more effective, and more broadly based.

bemusedlybespectacled:

bemusedlybespectacled:

since I’m thinking about this instead of studying for bar prep:

people in general tend to assume that a person who’s been arrested is either innocent or guilty. and if they’re guilty, then they deserve fewer rights than the innocent person.

like, if the police break into an innocent person’s house and look for drugs, we recognize that it’s a bad thing and a gross violation of rights. but if the police break into someone’s house and do find drugs, well, that’s just what they deserved. we’d all be upset if the police started randomly murdering people on the street for no reason, but many wouldn’t mind if the police started randomly killing known child molesters. it’s not okay if the police plant evidence to frame an innocent man for murder, but if they know he’s the murderer and plant evidence to help the case along? well, that’s unfortunate but necessary.

there are three problems with this:

1. You cannot always know with certainty who’s innocent and who’s guilty;
2. A two-tiered “innocent” and “guilty” legal structure will always be used against innocent marginalized people;
3. Even guilty people have rights.

this happens a lot on tumblr. not exclusively on tumblr (it’s also a major aspect of most “gritty” police dramas and almost all comics), but it’s definitely there. like, calls to summarily execute rapists sound great in theory, because we all agree that rape is evil. except for when it’s used to kill innocent black men who looked the wrong way at a white woman. 

and there are people who will say that no, of course, the problem isn’t summarily killing rapists, the problem is summarily killing the wrong people (that is, innocent people). which, again, you can’t know who’s innocent and who’s guilty - lots of innocent people aren’t sweet old ladies who’ve never done anything wrong, or have perfect alibis and never contradict themselves. hell, being guilty of a crime in the past doesn’t mean that they committed this specific crime that they’ve been accused of.

and even if they are guilty - even if they are stone-cold, unrepentantly guilty - they still have rights. that’s what “innocent until proven guilty” means. it means that stripping someone of their legal rights is a big fucking deal, so no matter how guilty Obvious McCriminal looks, you still have to follow the rules we’ve set in place to prevent abuses. 

like, it’s not that every person who’s ever been treated shittily by police and the court system is actually innocent, so therefore the system is bad. it’s that we have a system that treats people like shit once we’ve decided they’re guilty, regardless of when the decision is made, and we’re okay with that. after conviction? definitely. after arrest? yup. before arrest, because we just have a feeling about them? sure.

and I get why people make posts or write stories about guilty people being treated badly. wanting vengeance is a powerful emotion. grief and anger are powerful emotions. it is not unnatural to want to hurt people who have hurt others. people like the idea of karma, of cosmic scales balancing out the hurt and suffering inflicted by a person by making them suffer back. I’m not saying that no one is allowed to have those feelings. 

I’m just saying that there are implications behind them that are deeply disturbing (“if I decide you’re guilty, you’re less of a person to me”) and that it’s the primary driving force behind most of the issues in our criminal justice system.

actually, since this post has become relevant (again), I’d like everyone to join me in a little thought experiment: why do the police bring up a murdered person’s criminal record when they are extrajudicially killed?

like, we can all agree that the sentence for drug possession, drunk driving, trespassing, etc. is not execution, and even if it was, that’s after they’ve been arrested and convicted. cops are not judges, so it’s not their call to decide if someone is guilty or to punish them for it. so why does it matter if someone is “a known criminal,” or if they have drugs in their system, or if they have a gun on their person?

“well, obviously it’s to bias the public against the person who was killed,” you might say. okay, but why is that?

it’s because they know that we think of guilty people as less than human, and innocent people as blameless. therefore the murdered person deserved to die (because guilty people deserve what they get), and the cop is innocent (he was just trying to protect people!). if it didn’t work as a tactic, then they wouldn’t do it!

it is this mindset that permits the police to murder. we cannot stop police violence unless we dismantle the idea that being guilty of a crime negates your humanity and your civil rights.

Anonymous asked:

Former cop. Just telling the truth here - the good cops who went into the force to help? They don't last long. Joined at 21, wanted to make a good difference. Lived in a town less than 15k people. Mostly domestic disturbance calls, missing pets + kids, wellness checks, so I thought. Peaceful town means you're doing a good job? Nope. If you dont catch criminals you're lazy. Get reamed for being soft. Literally tell you to search out criminals not just find them.Teach you to react first bc (cont.)

chaos-and-recover:

(Cont) a split second could mean death. Then teach you how to profile but “we dont profile” wink nudge. So you show up see a man bent over a woman when someone calls, says they heard screaming. React. Guy is raping her. Nope. She was having a seizure. He was her helper. Friend of mine attacked him. Easy mistake when they teach you that. Friends quits bc of guilt. Me? Always got reamed bc I didnt give out enough fucking tickets. Fuck that. “Find curfew breakers. Find lapse insurance.” (Cont)

(Cont) I would sit in parking lots running random license plates while all my coworkers ride on people’s asses in the middle of the night to trick them into speeding. Its not about upholding the law and arresting criminal. You’re a fucking snitch, trying to fin ANY lawbreaker bc you can’t be lazy. Then you see some fucked up shit. Little girl goes missing. Find her in a creek, head cracked up on a rock. Animals picked at her for a few days. You get desensitized or you can’t do the job. (Cont)

(Cont) so you get numb to screaming and dead bodies and girls crying about boyfriends raping them or you go nuts. Me I thought well this small town they donr have Real Problems so they make me chase down 15 year olds with a cigarette to hand over tobacco tickets. I won’t do that so the other guys relentlessly bully me for being a pussy lazy PoS. I go to city with real problems. Same damn thing. “Search for criminals! If you dont find enough you’re lazy!” We aren’t sitting around til you (cont)

(Cont) til you break the law we are looking for it even if its dumb shit. And then you go someplace big and tell you to look for suspicious things. Blackddues in nice suits are pimps. Black dudes in nice cars are dealers. Black women are crazy and best their boyfriends. Latina lie about being raped to get revenge. That’s just how it is. So you say hell no. They eat you alive. If you need therapy you’re a pussy. Hostage situation, black dude with knife holding a woman. I talk him down. (Cont)

(Cont) Guy gets arrested. I get pulled into the office and yelled at for NOT shooting him. Saved his life and hers and I got in trouble. Had to file paperwork. Didnt make any friends because they ront trust me. Cops will do drugs on weekends then arrest people for doing the same so they get their “quota” (which wink nudge dont exist). If a cop does something bad and you do the right thing and “rat him out” they will harass you. Found myself relocated when I testified against another cop. (Cont)

(Cont) Go to a different place. Same fucking shit. Cops get paid shit, taught to react first based on assumption, taught to specifically assume racist shit, taught to go OUT of their way to FIND shit, get thrown into an atmosphere of bullying if you dont comply, then get desensitized to shit. If you’re a good cop, You won’t make it , bc you can’t come out of that shit safe. I quit before I was forty. I’m fifty now and work in a mine. Fuck cops.

Ps - former cop - using my niece’s tumblr bc she showed me this, which is why I’m using anonymous. Not trying to harass anybody.

Copying anon’s follow up messages above to have the whole story in one place.

Thank you for sharing your experience, anon, and for confirming it – there are no good cops because good people who become cops either don’t stay cops or don’t stay good people. There’s no other option.

gustavowasright-deactivated2022:

gustavowasright-deactivated2022:

my favorite example of “reinforcement drives behavior” is canine narcotics detection because on one hand you got the k-9s false alerting all the time because they know alerting is what gets them their ball, and then you ALSO got the cops who enable the false alerting all the time because they know alerting gets them probable cause (thanks Florida v Harris!) and probable cause means they can snoop through ur shit and even use civil asset forfeiture to take it. i have a 6000 word essay festering in my heart about narcotics detection dogs in america

soooooo in Florida v Harris, SCOTUS ruled that detection certification on its own is sufficient evidence for the presumption of reliability for a specific dog’s alert. like, dog passes whatever its specific jurisdiction requires in terms of certification; bam! its alert (arf arf little Timmy has a kilo) is considered credible till the end of career/certification. yet despite the curious amount of credence by the US justice system, narcotics dogs lack uniformity of standards for certification to an absurd degree.

we all know behavior is malleable and never truly ~finished!~ especially when it comes to one so precarious as detection, with dogs so wildly motivated as Malinois and field Labs. the contingency of “odor = reward” must diligently be maintained or the contingency will blur to “alert = reward” and then you have a dog who tells you what you want to hear but nothing of merit. and due to the myopic decisions of the courts, the dog becomes a probable cause dispensing machine. :|

ultimately, no litmus test exists for the credibility of a certification program. but, certification programs are the litmus test for the credibility of a k-9’s narcotics alert. in other words, anything that the government designates as “certification” means that the courts will take the dog’s sniff seriously.

this is also despite a low bar prefacing police ability to perform a dog search. SCOTUS doesn’t consider k-9 detection to be a true search, because it doesn’t invade privacy (i.e. rifling through your underwear drawer?), merely determines whether or not you are in the possession of contraband. assesses its presence or absence. the Fourth Amendment provides meager comfort in the face of k-9 searches due to circular reasoning from SCOTUS re contraband… but that’s tangential. as long as a cop doesn’t extend a traffic stop, he has every power to pull out his dog to search the exterior of your vehicle during a routine stop. since a dog’s nose theoretically only assesses the presence of absence of contraband, their search is not considered a violation of your right to privacy.

the major issue here is that dogs are considered infallible. equivalent in reliability and accuracy to a mechanical precision instrument. but SCOTUS fails to take into account multiple factors to the fallibility of k-9s. no one doubts the physical olfactory prowess of a dog. what’s at question is the training and the handling. i.e. the interpretation of what the dog has to say. the degree of trust our judicial system places in both the dog’s training and the continued competency of the handler provides yet another tool of exploitation for the cops.

narcotics detection dogs feature a sickeningly high rate of error. the most common number stated is around 50%. given the certification inconsistency regarding k-9s, it probably isn’t a surprise that there is little data recorded on searches conducted around the US. but what studies are indicating about training and handling practices is not flattering. specifically, they demonstrate the sinister extent of false positive alerts by detection dogs. a 2011 study in Animal Cognition revealed pervasive false positives. in the words of the lead author,

• “It isn’t just about how sensitive a dog’s nose is or how well-trained a dog is. There are cognitive factors affecting the interaction between a dog and a handler that can impact the dog’s performance. These might be as important — or even more important — than the sensitivity of a dog’s nose.”

as followers of this blog understand, high drive dogs are extremely motivated to elicit their reward. as frequently and fully as possible. and they are always learning. it’s like having a toddler with the unique ability to detect ghosts. it’s nice that your toddler has this ability, now can you actually harness it? or will you end up with a toddler smugly aware crying ghost leads to sugary reward?

of course, this analogy quickly falls apart because presumably the toddler’s parent has an investment in accurately detecting ghosts. meanwhile cops don’t have much investment in accurately detecting drugs. in fact, dogs who churn out false positive alerts behoove them. by the CredibilityTM invested in detection dogs by SCOTUS, whenever a k-9 alerts, they are providing probable cause. in other words, what SCOTUS said before about detection dogs merely providing a Y/N answer re contraband? yeah, no. cops can take their false positive and search through all your stuff and find “evidence” of a “crime” and use it to retroactively justify their search. even if the evidence and crime they scrounged up has nothing to do with the drug claim. or if they don’t find anything they will write false positives off to drug residue, i.e. stale flecks of bud from your last summer vacation in Colorado. and there is no consequence! for the cops anyway - you are looking at being arrested and undergoing civil asset forfeiture. i would be super curious to know how much asset forfeiture each year is predicated on the word of a dog hankering for their ball.

and this is open and egregious and still drug dogs are viewed as credible! for more horrifying numbers: in 2011, the Chicago Tribune published an article stating: “…a Tribune analysis of three years of data for suburban departments found that only 44 percent of those alerts by the dogs led to the discovery of drugs or paraphernalia. For Hispanic drivers, the success rate was just 27 percent.” the drug dog in US v Bentley had a 93% alert rate! that is BONKERS! utter abuse of a purported tool. but hey, it explains why cops call k-9s “probable cause on four legs”