Firearms detection dogs in an NPE

[proamateur]

Hi everyone,
A mall in a nearby town was the scene of a gang/personally motivated shooting recently. Thankfully, there were no fatalities. However, this has sparked controversy and discussion about increasing security in the mall. This mall is already marked as a "gun-free zone," which is legally binding in my state, but it has been announced that they will now have trained dogs to detect concealed firearms and explosives. I have am not familiar with their use in places other than airports and similar areas. For people who know more, are they actually able to detect the presence of firearms? I wasn't sure if it was a "feel good" measure or an actual increase in security measures. It seems like if they are able to detect them, total concealment would not suffice. Thankfully, I don't really have a need to go there, but am concerned of their use in other places I may go.

Similarly, I work with firearms and black powder pyrotechnics every day. The powder residue is very hard to get off my hands at the end of the day, so I am curious of the likelihood that a dog would alert to me if there was one patrolling the airport. I don't think it would be an issue, as I don't wear work clothes off-work and don't use my backpack I travel with at work.

Thanks.

The article explaining the new security measures:
https://www.jsonline.com/story/comm..._Zwf5CbPzCdV8_ht5lDAtZEfHaYCWWGvv2Mtg7NNW-gl4

 

[Lutz501]

This is a sample size of one so take it with a grain of salt but:
My agency fielded our first gun detection dog about a year ago and I've had the pleasure of working on the same team with him and his handler for the last year. That dog is scary good and fast at finding guns, ammo, gun parts, and even areas where weapons had been stored for extended periods of time. Usually he is deployed in either an area search to locate guns/ammo in a specific area or if we are fairly certain badguy dumped a gun somewhere the doggo can do an article search through that area to locate whatever was dumped. I'm not sure how they would deploy them in a mall as the gun wouldn't leave a scent trail and a mall would be filled with all kinds of scents and odors from all the people in them. I would think anyone with a gun would be ok unless you actually got fairly close to the dog. But that's just based on the training and type of gun dog I have seen so YMMV.

Gun dogs are a really cool and useful tool for catching badguys but I hadn't thought about people using them to keep citizens for legally carrying. Much less nice.

 

[ggammell]

Dogs searching people is not awesome. What’s the point of area searching after someone has left? Are they going to sweep cars in the lot when no one is inside? Then what when it alerts? Good luck getting a search with that.

the uses described above are valid and permissible means. But any kind of arbitrary use by a private entity is going to meet a lot hurdles for application and legality/admissibility.

 

[weaver1032]

Our State Capitol Police had used a vapor wake dog for gun/bomb detection. The dog could, in theory, also locate casings, and discarded guns in area searches. We used it a handful of times and had no luck in finding tossed guns. The handler spoke highly of the training (for training they were deployed in train terminals and bus terminals in VA, I believe) and swore by the dogs' accuracy. Interestingly after about a year, the handler left for another agency and the K9 program was folded. I know their dog was frequently deployed in/around the Capitol but to my knowledge no successful finds.

 

[WAVandal]

Are the dogs being run by a private security company or by local LE? - Disregard, I re-read the article and the dogs will be run by a private security company. Seem the PD Chief is ok with this too.

I'd have to confirm with our handler but IIRC there is case law that prevents a handler form using a K9 to sniff search an individual. If the mall rent-a-cop and Fluffy the wonder mutt were to just randomly walk up to me and start trying to detain me and have the dog sniff me my first call is to the cops for the illegal detention, second to my lawyer.

 

[Arete]

In the context of *property owner/management/representatives* enforcing their own rules at a large venue with numerous public and private points of access. Talk and gestures are cheap. The devil is in the details. I just don’t see it being effective at disuading thugs from commiting thuggery.
-If they put a dog at access control point, criminals will just use another one.
-Using these dogs and trained handlers is expensive, even more so for using multiple dog/handler teams. How many public access control points does a typical mall have? Lots. Can't close 'em all. It's bad for business. They are already hurting from the double whammy of online shopping and covid. Impeding shoppers will not be tolerated for long. Karen and Carl barely tolerate airport security, they aren’t gonna be happy about it at the mall. Security measures that inconvenience the public and merchants will be rolled back or made infrequent.
-What happens when the dog/handler goes on break or lunch?
-If the dog alerts, what are they gonna do, detain the person? Don't think so. Ask for consent to search and deny entry if the person declines?
-How invasive are they going to get? What would a secondary screening involve? Criminals are going to very quickly figure out what will and won't be searched, and exploit these things. Like they already do.
-They could do roving patrols as well, but again I see all kinds of problems with actual implementation . . . if the dog alerts and they demand consent to search and the person refuses, they get escorted off the property and trespassed? Are they gonna detain the person if they refuse? I can see all kinds of claims of profiling, threats of lawsuits, etc. and god forbid it turns into a use of force situation . . . most stores have hands off policies for thieves. What's a mall going to do about this, especially since it will involve dealing with presumably armed persons? Can you imagine what will happen if a rent a cop was foolish enough to try to push it with a “no” person?
-I could foresee LE agencies refusing to allow their officers to do this type of job in an off duty capacity for all the above reasons, and more
-Creating a que outside an ACP creates opportunities for other negative outcomes.

It sounds good to normal earth people but there are so many holes in it . . .

 

[Barry B]

^^^^ x1,000,000

 

[jBravo3]

Good input above. Courts have been somewhat divided on this issue, with the majority of them concluding that reasonable suspicion must pre-exist before a K9 is utilized for a deliberate search of a person.

There are some exceptions, and of course, the courts have ruled almost exclusively in cases involving LE - not private security on private property. That's a different thing, and as noted in the above posts, rife with legal problems of its own (primarily civil issues, which means lawsuits, which means lots of money paid out on top of an already undoubtedly expensive program).

One of the primary objectives of police service/protection dogs is crime deterrence, and that objective may be accomplished to a certain degree at the intended location with mere visibility/presence - if the purpose of the dog is well advertised.

My personal opinion of dogs being utilized in this particular way is that it's a huge waste of time, money and resources. I think there are more effective and efficient ways of addressing the targeted issue than detection dogs. By the way, that's nothing against dogs themselves, just the people who'd be using them.

A few cases to spring board off of as references:

B.C. v Plumas (1999) Ninth Circuit
Horton v Goose Creek (1982) Fifth Circuit
Doe v Renfrow (1980) Seventh Circuit

 

[Vista461]

Hi everyone,
A mall in a nearby town was the scene of a gang/personally motivated shooting recently. Thankfully, there were no fatalities. However, this has sparked controversy and discussion about increasing security in the mall. This mall is already marked as a "gun-free zone," which is legally binding in my state, but it has been announced that they will now have trained dogs to detect concealed firearms and explosives. I have am not familiar with their use in places other than airports and similar areas. For people who know more, are they actually able to detect the presence of firearms? I wasn't sure if it was a "feel good" measure or an actual increase in security measures. It seems like if they are able to detect them, total concealment would not suffice. Thankfully, I don't really have a need to go there, but am concerned of their use in other places I may go.

Similarly, I work with firearms and black powder pyrotechnics every day. The powder residue is very hard to get off my hands at the end of the day, so I am curious of the likelihood that a dog would alert to me if there was one patrolling the airport. I don't think it would be an issue, as I don't wear work clothes off-work and don't use my backpack I travel with at work.

Thanks.

The article explaining the new security measures:
https://www.jsonline.com/story/comm..._Zwf5CbPzCdV8_ht5lDAtZEfHaYCWWGvv2Mtg7NNW-gl4

If they’re actually using the dog, it must be sparingly. I don’t go there too often since I moved out of the county, but I haven’t seen the dog since they’ve put the signs up.

That mall is going to be the next northridge when the soccer moms stop going completely.

 

[Darth Tater]

There's a large place near me that I won't identify on the open forum that uses explosive/firearm vapor dogs extremely effectively in crowds. They run the dog on the wake (for lack of a better term) behind someone as they walk. Their dogs are scary good. I've loaned a handler 3 rounds of .45 duty ammo to use as a test. The dog found them repeatedly, including in a full outdoor trash can.

 

[blitz]

It all depends on the exact scent the dog is trained to alert on. the scent that the materials firearms are made of are fairly common, steel, polymer. training a K9 to alert on these would be counterproductive due to the amount of false positives you'd get.

they are most likely trained to alert to the smell of common smokeless powders which, even to humans have a very different scent than gsr. I'd say a positive alert based just off of the scent of gsr on your hands is highly unlikely.

If you are ultra paranoid, pretty much any soap with activated charcoal will take the scent off of you enough to result in the k9 not alerting.