Police sniffer dogs at work at St Peters station. Photo: Janie Barrett for smh.com.au
How do you determine the return on an investment in Police drug and firearm detection dogs? let’s start off with saying they have a 100% accuracy rate when they are certified which means that if they don’t find something there was nothing to find as they will even alert to someone who had taken drugs earlier in the day or who has drug residue on their clothing. Dogs are indiscriminate they will alert to everyone from the first time drug taker to the largest drug pusher out there. They will alert to a gun or a bomb or other explosive. So how then could some in the police force feel they are ineffective and obtrusive and their cost is out of control?
They do not have to physically open anything, pat someone down, put their nose to each person. The lines around the dogs can keep moving and only those who the dogs alert at will be pulled out of the line. Yes upon seeing Police dogs people will dump their drugs or other illegal material rather then get caught. just their mere presence makes a location safer from violence and drugs how is that not a solid ROI?
Government figures in Sydney, Australia supplied in response to questions on notice show that last year sniffer dogs were involved in 551 searches for firearms or explosives, which identified only five positive cases. Of the 15,779 searches for illegal drugs, 5087 identified them. How it is the dogs faults that there were no drugs or weapons to find in the first place?
The secretary for the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, Stephen Blanks, said the use of sniffer dogs infringed people’s civil liberties and could only be justified if they resulted in a high rate of successful detections. Ont he other hand Don Weatherburn, the director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, said the high number of searches relative to detections was not an indication of failure in the context of deterrence.
How do you measure one less gun on the street which could have been used in a drive that accidentally kills a child along with the intended victim. How do you measure the fact that there is one less drug dealer who can no longer sell to 12 years olds?
News about the effectiveness of scent detecting dogs has traveled far and wide. I suspect they are a major deterrent to crime.
And they work for kibble. 🙂
How can the greens say sniffer dogs are unnecessary when 1/3 of people searched by them are found to be carrying drugs. “Of the 15,779 searches for illegal drugs, 5087 identified them”. That sounds very successful to me. The police say”The dogs have a strong deterrence factor: they not only lead to the seizure of drugs from dealers and users, but people also dump their drugs when they see the dogs.”
Mr Shoebridge said the police drug detection dog unit, consisting of 14 dogs, cost $868,037.39 in the 2002-03 financial year. If the greens think this is a waste, what about the police storage inspections of over 150,000 licensed gun owners. If we assume this to be 2 hours each for 150,000 gun owners and value the polices time and resources at $50/hour that costs the NSW police $15 million. What a waste.