A couple weeks ago, Bartonville police announced they were going to be “proactive” in the fight against drugs. They were going to set up roadblocks, pull over cars and have one of those highly-trained drug-sniffing dogs do it’s thing.
Although I consider the act of pulling over cars just to see if there’s a possibility that the driver might, just might, be holding a bag of marijuana to be a clear-cut violation of basic Constitutional rights, I’m sure that our law-and-order Supreme Court lets police get away with it. Fine.
But there’s the funny part: Their dog is “busted.” As in “broken.” As in “doesn’t work.” A source tells me of one person who was stopped in one of these “proactive” enforcement events. Police took him out of his car and made him stand there while the drug-sniffing dog circled the car, sniffing away. The dog found nothing, which is understandable, since the driver didn’t have ANY drugs in the car.
But he DID have a small bag of weed in his pants.
Certainly, the driver thought, this dog is eventually going to hit on the grass in his pocket. Nope. Nothing. Not even after the dog took a good long sniff.
My source thinks the Bartonville police got ripped off by whoever sold them the dog. He thinks they gave them an ordinary pound dog, and not one that was trained to sniff out drugs.
I find that hard to believe. Why, I saw on an episode of “Dragnet” that these dogs were absolutely infallible. That’s why judges allow into evidence drugs seized after dogs smell something funny and react to it.
Jack Webb wouldn’t lie to us, would he?
On the other hand, maybe the dog just didn’t want to play with his towel.
Despite this dog’s lack of accuracy, I wouldn’t advise anything to think they can get away with transporting grass through the fair village of Bartonville. Even a broken watch is right twice as day.
But if they DO catch you, you might luck out and have Kevin Lyons personally prosecute your case.
Not that I would advice anyone to smoke marijuana. Heaven forbid.
And don’t bother asking me who the guy driving the car is. I don’t know his name.
Tags: Bartonville, drug-snifing dogs, Kevin Lyons, War on Drugs
Billy Dennis is a former reporter and editor at small daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Missouri. He comments on media, news and politics. He also owns and operates 
Way to go Billy… Post a story you heard third hand (or likely more) from somebody who knows somebody else who said was true as fact on your “online news” outlet. This is just the sort of story (read: rumor) that goes around small towns like Bartonville. And you complain about the crap that turns up in the Journal Star…
The dog can always sue me for libel.
If they got a genuine Belgan Malinois dog they got the right breed. Others are optional. This breed is what DEA uses for drug sniffing.
Billy says: “The dog can always sue me for libel.”
Funny… That’s exactly the excuse the tabloids use when they report about the giant snake-baby.
Giant snake baby?
That’s a new one.
I’m familiar with Bat-Boy and the alien whose had secret meetings with Bill Clinton.
Even the police who handle the dogs will tell you that the dogs are not reliable; they get false positives and miss pretty regularly. Like people, some of them are better at their jobs than others, and they can have a bad day. I’m not against the use of dogs when there is a reason of suspicion. But marching through schools with them to “send a message to the kids” instead of a problem demonstrated otherwise and setting up random drug-sniffing road blocks seems to be a misuse of a public police resource.