Sniffer dog violations

Since a couple of years back and the sniffer dog debacles at Mardi Gras venues, and the resulting investigations, one of the recommendations put forward by the community was to abandon the use of sniffer dogs as they weren't in any way accurate. Invasive and humiliating searches were being done to completely innocent people. This recommendation though fell on deaf ears as far as the police were concerned.

Now a new study has been released by the Greens showing just how wrong these dogs get it. The pics above are from Redfern train station, where they commonly conduct sniffer dog searches. I was passing through there one day a while back and saw a similar thing; thug cops with dogs. I did notice also that the cop shop was directly across the road from the station, how convenient for the cops eh.

It's time this issue was properly addressed. A gross invasion of our freedoms and personal space. 

"This data shows that every year in the range of 10,000 people are routinely and grossly inappropriately humiliated on our streets or on public transport," Mr Shoebridge said. 

"Their rights are trespassed, they are subject to an intrusive and humiliating public search, and on each occasion that happens the police know that they are far more likely than not to find no drugs, and to not have a proper basis for the search - yet nobody is doing anything about it." 

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Sniffer dog statistics 

•  64% of searches found no drugs in 2013. 
• Nearly 17,800 people searched. 
•  2.44% of searches led to successful prosecutions. 
• Passengers at Redfern Station 6.5 times more likely to be searched than passengers at Central Station. more