Well, this study doesn't prove they're unreliable. Even if the false alarm rate was 1000%, they would still be quite reliable, as long as the rate of false negatives was low. Who cares if they have to search a few extra people out of a million people to find that 1 in a million with a bomb? That would be extremely efficient. Well, as regarding bombs, at least. Drugs might be a different tune.
can bomb sniffing dogs smell guns or ammo?
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BaltimoreBoy
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alsaqr
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i'm a long time EOD/UXO guy. i have worked on jobs that had real explosive sniffing dogs. Those dogs are pretty darn good; thats why some companies use them for mine clearance.
Yes.
Weyerhauser asked the local cops to bring the dogs. When the dogs alerted, the company had the owners open their vehicles. That incident lead to the OK guns in parking lots law. That law has withstood scrutiny in federals appeals court.
Yes.
Weyerhauser asked the local cops to bring the dogs. When the dogs alerted, the company had the owners open their vehicles. That incident lead to the OK guns in parking lots law. That law has withstood scrutiny in federals appeals court.
Well, I know that I had a dog supposedly hit on an item of mine as containing drugs some years back. There were no drugs, nor had there ever been. Makes me wonder how reliable they are...
Well, here is the thing about that. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States has something to say about unreasonable searches and seizures. A method with a huge number of false alarms being used as justification for searching all of those people seems pretty questionable, if you ask me.
Gloob said:
Well, here is the thing about that. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States has something to say about unreasonable searches and seizures. A method with a huge number of false alarms being used as justification for searching all of those people seems pretty questionable, if you ask me.
tnxdshooter
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I am in the law enforcement field. We have dogs that can detect bombs, drugs, dead bodies or live people, and can even sniff out illegal cell phones (contraband) in our prisons. Having said that though, if I remember correctly they are not cross trained on stuff.
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tnxdshooter
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I suppose anything is possible. I mean heck if they can sniff out cell phones why not guns and ammo?
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Well, they would have to be trained for guns/ammo.
I know some who are in LE and I have not yet heard of a dog trained to sniff out guns/ammo.
And I suspect that for most LE purposes it wouldn't even be all that useful since there are SO SO MANY legal and legitimate firearms (and munitions) out there.
Plus, on a personal level, if I was only breaking the policy of a company I was using (like Amtrak or whatever) I wouldn't be too worried about it. The risk of being discovered is so much lower than the risk of needing a firearm and not having one.
I know some who are in LE and I have not yet heard of a dog trained to sniff out guns/ammo.
And I suspect that for most LE purposes it wouldn't even be all that useful since there are SO SO MANY legal and legitimate firearms (and munitions) out there.
Plus, on a personal level, if I was only breaking the policy of a company I was using (like Amtrak or whatever) I wouldn't be too worried about it. The risk of being discovered is so much lower than the risk of needing a firearm and not having one.
hermannr
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It is my understanding most "bomb" dogs are trained to detect nitrates. At least the ones the border patrol use.
Bad case a few years ago when an Arab (US Citizen) came from Canada, and the bomb dog allerted on him. Poor guy spent months in jail, and his car was absolutely distroyed...the reason? The had been fertilizer in the car that had Ammonium Nitrates in it. The bag of fertilizer was long gone, but the odor was still there for the dog to find.
Bad case a few years ago when an Arab (US Citizen) came from Canada, and the bomb dog allerted on him. Poor guy spent months in jail, and his car was absolutely distroyed...the reason? The had been fertilizer in the car that had Ammonium Nitrates in it. The bag of fertilizer was long gone, but the odor was still there for the dog to find.
T Bran
Member
Regarding the sniffer machines at the airports they are much less reliable than we have been led to beleive.
Afriend of mine is an employee of one of the major carriers and also a geology student. On a class field trip they went to a mine that was blasting and got covered in dust and obviously residue from the explosives. That afternoon she went thru security at the airport. The sniffer poofer machine didnt even flinch so she informed them that it must not be working. They just blew her off and shushed her on down the line,
to say that she was appaled is putting it mildly.
Never assume you are in capable hands that are not your own.
T
Afriend of mine is an employee of one of the major carriers and also a geology student. On a class field trip they went to a mine that was blasting and got covered in dust and obviously residue from the explosives. That afternoon she went thru security at the airport. The sniffer poofer machine didnt even flinch so she informed them that it must not be working. They just blew her off and shushed her on down the line,
to say that she was appaled is putting it mildly.
Never assume you are in capable hands that are not your own.
T
JTHunter
Member
Lemay - I've heard that same story but also a second reason. This also applied to many of the dogs used in Korea and WW2. These dogs had been trained to be aggressive and once taught, could not be "un-taught", thus creating a handling and safety problem back home.
I worked in a Custom's bonded warehouse, and U.S. Customs came by one day and told me they were training a new dog. They wanted to hide a bag of drugs in the warehouse somewhere - it was a bag of marijuana, and see if the dog could find it.
So one guy went back in the warehouse and came back after awhile. I asked them why they didn't start the search. They don't me they had to wait for the scent molocules to settle. So we talked for a few minutes and then they started searching. The dog did alert when he got close to the bag.
So one guy went back in the warehouse and came back after awhile. I asked them why they didn't start the search. They don't me they had to wait for the scent molocules to settle. So we talked for a few minutes and then they started searching. The dog did alert when he got close to the bag.
Destructo6
Member
A dog can be trained to detect and alert on just about any scent.
I've worked closely (read; "daily") with dogs that can detect all sorts of illegal drugs and concealed humans.
In my experience, the dogs are highly reliable. If you cared to dig deep enough, via interview or disassembly of vehicle, the drugs were present or residue was present (smoking out in the vehicle or had transported drugs).
These dogs aren't addicted to anything except their play toy.
I've worked closely (read; "daily") with dogs that can detect all sorts of illegal drugs and concealed humans.
In my experience, the dogs are highly reliable. If you cared to dig deep enough, via interview or disassembly of vehicle, the drugs were present or residue was present (smoking out in the vehicle or had transported drugs).
These dogs aren't addicted to anything except their play toy.
I suspect that gun-sniffing dogs may actually be trained to alert on not only firing residue but also on common guncare products. Makes me wonder if a thorough cleaning and relubrication using expedient products instead of dedicated guncare products might confuse things a bit.
Cesiumsponge
Member
The TSA has "red teams" that routinely smuggle bomb and gun items through security checkpoints. That's their job. I don't know if they test canine units but TSA security has a fantastic failure rate to catch these smuggled items.
How does a false positive rate of 25-50% equal "a few extra people out of a million people" and how is such a high error rate "extremely efficient"? What's the point of substance-sniffing dogs if that's your mentality? Just do a 100% scan on everyone, security theater be damned. Lets bypass the Constitution and go straight to fascism and chock up the inconvenience and intrusion as a casualty of security. That's the same mentality fueling the rise of paramilitary police raids. Who cares if a few toddlers and old women are killed by police serving no-knocks on wrong addresses, false informant information, or victimless crimes like smoking pot or VFD vets playing some poker? Hey, as long as we nab some bad guys somewhere in the mix, right?
There was a study done last year on false alerts. There were tests designed to trick the dogs and the handlers. The handler's were twice as likely to subconsciously trigger the dogs on these tests. That suggests the human element is a bigger issue than the canine element. Sounds like operator error, and it appears it isn't necessarily malicious in nature.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/02/animal_behaviour
In Australia, they are getting an 80% false positive rate. 11,248 nothings out of 14,102 searches.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/a...ng-four-out-of-five-times-20111211-1oprv.html
And here is a fairly recent article on an incident where the drug dog played a role:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/...ped-searched-illinois_n_1364087.html#comments
I don't think alerting to gun care products would be useful because many gun care products are simply re-branded commercial or industrial products. There isn't really a gun lube company out there that has it's own processing plants, men in white lab coats swirling beakers, and a room full of scientific and mechanical testing gear to produce enough volume sales of 4oz bottle of $10 gun lube to sustain such an outfit. Most of these companies buy a base petroleum product and add a few additives to make it their proprietary blend, slap on a label, and call it good. Check out the MSDS sheets some time.
I spent a good deal of time looking at MSDS sheets back when they were a lot more descriptive than they are now. Unfortunately, in the last few years they've gotten VERY generic--very little detail on specific ingredients or percentages.
It's true that the primary ingredients in gun lubricants don't usually differ much from typical industrial lubricants, but it's also true, as you acknowledge that the additive package is what makes the difference. And it's also true that the additive package in a gun oil can make up a significant percentage of the whole. One that sticks in my mind had an additive package that was about 20% of the product.
I suspect that there are some strong similarities in the additive packages of common gun oils and also some general similarities in cleaning solvents given that the applications are the same.
There are a few sources that suggest that in addition to gunpowder residue, that guncare products may be part of what gun-sniffing dogs search for.
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/19...577_1_gun-ownership-teen-agers-single-gunshot
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local...niffing-dogs/2011/11/21/gIQAL9ZKoN_story.html
It's true that the primary ingredients in gun lubricants don't usually differ much from typical industrial lubricants, but it's also true, as you acknowledge that the additive package is what makes the difference. And it's also true that the additive package in a gun oil can make up a significant percentage of the whole. One that sticks in my mind had an additive package that was about 20% of the product.
I suspect that there are some strong similarities in the additive packages of common gun oils and also some general similarities in cleaning solvents given that the applications are the same.
There are a few sources that suggest that in addition to gunpowder residue, that guncare products may be part of what gun-sniffing dogs search for.
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/19...577_1_gun-ownership-teen-agers-single-gunshot
"This year, the policy got extra bite with the help of a pair of gun-sniffing dogs - named Rebel and Timer - who are making the rounds in local schools. The dogs are trained to sniff out the gunpowder in bullets, and the solvents and chemicals used to clean guns."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local...niffing-dogs/2011/11/21/gIQAL9ZKoN_story.html
"Cali and Lila trained for eight weeks to learn how to detect the scent of gunpowder, metal and oils on human hands, even in expansive spaces."
Do you know what 25-50% false positives means? That means for every 100 alerts, 50-75 are TRUE positives. That is so incredibly efficient that I don't even believe those numbers. (Of course, what the OP didn't mention are the number of false negatives... a much more important number for this particular endeavor.)
If half the population were trying to smuggle bombs onto airplanes, then it would be efficient to search everybody. And no one would be flying. It IS just a few extra people, because TRUE positives are so rare that all alerts, false positives and true positives, are rare. Same goes for dogs checking vehicles at border crossings. You can make the argument that it's like "profiling". But when 50-75% (using your 25-50% false positive rate, here) of the people you "profile" for a search ARE in the act of committing a crime* and/or trying to kill people, I'd say that's pretty darn efficient. So if you have to search 2 people out of a million to find the 1 person carrying a bomb, so what?
*I know. One problem with drug dogs is all the misdemeanor drug violations that will get caught here. But ok, back to the bombs!!!
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CountryUgly
Member
IMO the dogs do better with the smells of the bacterial variety. Ones trained to find people or other animals seem to never fail but the ones trained to detect chemicals and such have a much higher failure rate. Example: a good coon hound or a search and resuce dog rarely if ever fail to find what they are looking for and false alarms are even more rare. Drug and bomb dogs have a habit of false alarms and the amount of drugs that drive across our borders shows that they miss a few now and then too.
Tempest 455
Member
If you attend a Top Fuel race (Nitromethane) and get on a plane after, it will detect the residue on your clothes.
Tom609
Member
When I was in K9 back in the 60s, Sentry Dogs provided security and attack training was the emphasis. In the late 60s the move was to Patrol Dogs that could function around people and be called off if the perpetrator gave up and ceased resisting. I had a dog that was retrained and many others were too. Dogs would be isolated for several weeks or more and eventually accept the new handler and retraining. They are amazingly loyal and eager to please.
Some dogs had specialties. A colleague's dog had an exceptional nose. We would occasionally do demonstrations for visiting dignitaries in the ball field and one thing we would do is to have a visitor from the crowd go out to centerfield, rub a handkerchief in his hands, drop it on the ground and go back to his seat in the stands. The dog would then be brought out from the van, sniff the handkerchief and go through the crowd and up to the person that dropped it.
It's true that the dogs never left the overseas base they were initially assigned to. The hardest part of the job was having to leave them behind. Forty years later and I still think about him and have his picture in my office at work.
Any shortcoming on the dog's performance was a reflection on the handler's training habits. I'm probably prejudiced, but I think military dog handlers are far superior to their civilian counterparts. We trained longer, harder and continually. I see lax handling skills with many civilian handlers that would never have been accepted in the military. Just my opinion, but I think it's why you see inconsistent performance from the dogs today.
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