{"id":19309,"date":"2024-03-19T19:29:47","date_gmt":"2024-03-19T23:29:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=19309"},"modified":"2024-03-19T20:33:57","modified_gmt":"2024-03-20T00:33:57","slug":"the-canine-constitutional-veto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2024\/03\/19\/the-canine-constitutional-veto\/","title":{"rendered":"The Canine Constitutional Veto"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Police Dogs Have Abolished Constitutional Due Process<\/a><\/h1>\n

by James Bovard\u00a0\u00a0 \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Fifth Amendment declares, \u201cNo person shall be .\u00a0.\u00a0. deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.\u201d<\/p>\n

Except by dogs.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court declared in 1967, \u201cWherever a man may be, he is entitled to know that he will remain free from unreasonable searches and seizures.\u201d<\/p>\n

Except by dogs.<\/p>\n

The Fourth Amendment prohibits warrantless unreasonable searches, but canines now provide push-button vetoes for constitutional rights. Last month in my\u00a0piece<\/a> \u201cHighway Robbery Continues to be the Law of the Land,\u201d we saw how police across the nation concocted pretexts to stop and shake down drivers. But few people recognize how far police and judges have gone to exploit canines to nullify both privacy and property rights.<\/strong><\/p>\n

When a pooch graduates from a drug-sniffing training program, government officials act as if the dog has been awarded a Juris Doctor degree with the ability to instantly declare \u201cprobable cause\u201d and justify a search<\/strong>. If a private dog owner announced that he automatically had a right to seize control of any item his dog pawed or urinated upon, he would be denounced as a megalomaniac. But this is practically the prerogative that police claim for their dogs.<\/p>\n

Police canines have long provided the Midas touch to entitle government agents to plunder who they please thanks in part to the pervasive tainting of American currency.<\/strong> In 1985, the Toxicology Testing Service examined currency taken from prominent local citizens for a Miami Herald article. Then\u2013Dade County state attorney Janet Reno and future Florida governor Jeb Bush were both caught with drug-tainted bills in their possession. But nobody took a dime from those pooh-bahs. Thirteen years later, Bob McCabe, an official with the testing service, commented, \u201cEvery test I\u2019ve seen has shown that all money, except if it comes right from the bank, is tainted with drugs. People who run ATMs and tellers from the bank have even been found to have cocaine on their fingertips after handling money all day.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sporadic recognition that the tests were bogus did not prevent the abuse of dogs for a forfeiture gold rush<\/strong>. American Civil Liberties Union attorney Fred Joseph\u00a0groused<\/a> to the Washington Post<\/em> in 1990, \u201cEverything the dog does, no matter what it is, the police claim it\u2019s a hit. If the dog barks, it\u2019s a hit. If the dog sits down, it\u2019s a hit. If the dog fell over dead, they\u2019d probably claim the scent of cocaine killed him.\u201d\u00a0Stephen Komie, a Chicago-based attorney,\u00a0lamented<\/a> in 2019 that ordinary citizens\u2019 rights had no chance \u201cbecause the dog will never come and testify, and you can\u2019t cross examine a dog.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even though Janet Reno was personally caught in a test for tainted currency, she helped turbocharge federal plundering via dog alerts after she became attorney general in 1993. Federal judges occasionally derided doggy decrees:<\/p>\n