Mediaboss Marketing

Wont somebody please think of the police dogs? On Saturday, the Associated Press ran the latest example of a genre of news story thats become a regular accompaniment to marijuana legalization: the fate of now-superfluous drug-sniffing dogs.

Drug-sniffing dogs are notoriously unreliable at detecting drugs, and yet many American police ... [+] departments still insist on using K9 units.

Virginia is set to legalize the possession of up to an ounce of cannabis beginning in July. That means the early retirement of at least 15 drug-sniffing dogs throughout the state, as the AP itempicked up by outlets across the countryreported, because these dogs are trained to alert to the scent of cannabis.

Any alert is interpreted by police (and prosecutors, as well as most courts) as probable cause to effect a search under the Fourth Amendment. Since the dog cant discern between a large amount of cannabis and a single joint, and because a dog trained to detect both cocaine and marijuana cant inform its handler what was detected, the only path forward for police narcotics units is to retire their drug-sniffing dogs and acquire new hounds trained only to suss out cocaine, heroin, MDMA, or other substances still part of Americas war on drugs.

For civil liberties advocates as well as anyone concerned with criminal justice, this is a good development. Drug dogs should retire, because drug dogs are extremely bad at detecting drugs.

As Reason reported last month, drug dogs are often about as useful as a coin toss to determine whether a school locker, vehicle, or individual has drugs. In other cases, drug dogs simply respond to commands from its handler and ignores whatever scents are actually out there.

That is, the drug-sniffing dog isnt there to sniff out drugs at all. The drug-sniffing dog is just there to give the police probable cause to searchand to impound vehicles and detain people who later turn out to be innocenton demand.

Reason offered the story of Karma, a drug dog in Republic, Washington, as a parable. A K-9 unit handled by former Republic police Chief Loren Culp, Karma had a perfect record: he detected drugs every time he did a search. The problem was that Karma detected drugs when there were no drugs present.

When he had the chance to stop the impound of an innocent owners vehicle, his success rate was zero percent, Reason reported. That didnt stop Culp from employing Karma in searchesand that also didnt stop Culp from boasting on Facebook about Karmas perfect record.

A drug dog in action in Turkey in 2014.

Criminal-justice scholars and observers have known for years that the problems with Karma are found throughout the United States wherever drug dogs are employed.

As Jane Bambauer, a law professor at the University of Arizona, wrote in an article published in 2013, dogs are often wrong, alerting where no drugs can be found. Worse, dogs can be biased, she added, picking up on subtle cues from their handlers.

Bambauers analysis followed a 2011 study from the University of California, Davis, which found that police dogstrained to detect explosives as well as drugsare affected by human handlers beliefs, possibly in response to subtle, unintentional handler cues.

If the police dogs handler wants the dog to alertconsciously or otherwisetheres a good chance the dog will alert.

Marijuana legalization isnt the only reason why drug dogs value and purpose are being re-evaluated. Courts are becoming increasingly aware that drug dogs just arent good at finding drugs. In a reversal from the position of the Supreme Court 30 years ago, when drugs were considered such a scourge that drug dogs unreliability wasnt a concern, courts are now openly questioning police dogs merit.

As TechDirt.com noted, in a decision published last year, a federal court in Utah granted a defendants motion to suppress a drug dog search and dismissed his indictment, after noting serious concerns about the dogs training and reliability.

The court questioned the reliability of every drug dog in the statewhere cannabis is not legal beyond medical applications. This is an enormous boon to defense attorneys handling cases where a dog alert was the probable cause. If Utah thinks that drug dogs arent reliable indicators of the presence of drugs, what about other jurisdictions?

So far the nations highest court has affirmed law enforcements use. In Florida vs Harris, a decision issued in 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that if a drug dog has recently passed a training program, an alert from that dog is sufficient probable cause.

But as the record of Karma and other drug dogs with perfect training scores demonstrates, probable cause is a fait accompli. If the handler wants it, the handler can get it. Drugs need not be present.

So if drug dogs cant be relied upon to detect drugs, if drug dogs are often wrong, and if the courts think drug dogs are unreliable, whats the point? Why have them at all?

The real application of police dogs is psychological. The presence of a dog grants its police handler a sense of power and authority. If a search is desired, a search is granted. With a record like that, the sight of a dogor the chance that a dog will be encountered, at an airport, at a border crossing, or at a school, whateverwill deter and discourage the public from flouting the law. The approach of a drug dog might even compel a wavering lawbreaker to give himself up.

Thats not very fair or just, but in an era where all drugs were illegal, you could argue that this was at least legally defensible. Today, when cannabis is legal in some form for more than 200 million Americans, drug dogs snare innocent people in the criminal justice system.

Drug dogs are a vestige of the drug war. If a vast majority of Americans think cannabis should be legaland they doand if legal scholars and the courts think drug dogs are bad at their jobsand they do, and they arethen police departments probably should have been prepared for this moment, rather than providing grist for gauzy news items. But people love dogseven dogs that are civil-rights violation machinesand so here we are.

A Colombian policeman from an anti-drug unit walks with a sniffer dog amidst marijuana packages on ... [+] display for the press on August 24, 2012, at the anti-drug air base in Tulua, department of Valle del Cauca, Colombia. Four tons of marijuana "red dot" type allegedly belonging to the Sixth Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) were seized from a truck in the town of Buga, Valle del Cauca department, while being transported from the town of Corinto bound for the department of Norte de Santander. AFP PHOTO/Guillermo LEGARIA (Photo credit should read GUILLERMO LEGARIA/AFP/GettyImages)

So what about the dogs? The retired drug dogs in Virginia are all being adopted going home with their police handlerswhere, if so desired, they will alert to the presence of drugs every day, for the rest of their days.

The rest of us should wish them a happy and healthy retirementand encourage every other drug-sniffing dog currently in police employ to join them as soon as possible.

See the article here:
Marijuana Legalization Is Retiring Police Dogs. Why Thats GoodAnd Why All Drug K9 Units Should Go. - Forbes

It was another busy week in New York politics as the end of session in Albany draws ever closer, as does the Democratic primary for New York City mayor. In what has likely got all city Board of Elections employees breathing a sigh of relief, the state board has finally given the official thumbs up to software that will tabulate ranked-choice voting results. This week, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced yet another new incentive for people to get vaccinated, this time offering up full scholarships to public colleges to a lucky few teens. And he announced that the long-awaited East Side Access project will open to passengers next year. Keep reading for the rest of this weeks news.

In a major decision for New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that public schools in the city will be 100% open in the fall with no remote option. Currently, although schools have been open for in-person learning, the city has allowed students to continue learning remotely if they or their parents had concerns about returning to the classroom with the pandemic ongoing. But with vaccines getting approved for younger teens and children and consistently low positivity rates, de Blasio said that kids need to return to the classroom if the city wants to begin achieving a full recovery. But many parents, particularly parents of color, have long expressed wariness at the prospect of sending their kids back to the classroom, even if they dont like remote learning options. Asked about the prospect at the state level, Gov. Andrew Cuomo indicated that there will be a uniform approach to school reopenings and said the state is on track to have all schools fully reopened by the fall. He didnt say whether removing the remote option, as New Jersey recently announced as well, is something he is considering.

Although most eyes are on the Democratic primary for the New York City mayoral race, a heated race for the Republican nomination is also underway. And candidates Curtis Sliwa founder of the Guardian Angels and Fernando Mateo a restaurateur and bodega-owner advocate participated in their first debate of the race. Despite agreeing on many issues, including that crime is the most pressing issue facing the city and committing to refunding the police, the debate devolved into a shouting match of personal insults with props. Mateo attacked Sliwa, who leads in the only polling done in the race so far, as a liar and a comedian, and even mentioned Sliwas many rescue cats. Sliwa went after Mateo for his past support of Democratic candidates.

The state Senate moved on several pieces of legislation, at least partially driven by recent scandals surrounding the governor, to further strengthen the states sexual harassment laws and to reform the government ethics agency the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, or JCOPE. Asked about the reforms to the commission he helped establish several years ago, Cuomo called JCOPE meaningless and that reform would be ineffective without a constitutional amendment, which has also been proposed in the Legislature. Meanwhile, a much anticipated bill that would allow gig workers to unionize effectively died before arrival as most stakeholders came out in opposition to the proposal before it was even introduced.

Diane Morales campaign for mayor of New York City was rocked with internal turmoil the past week that led to her missing a candidate forum hosted by the Rev. Al Sharpton and to several members of her team resigning or getting fired. Her campaign manager and senior policy adviser both departed the campaign after Morales allegedly failed to address claims of racism, harassment and employee abuse. Morales has said that two of those fired were staffers who were at the root of the complaints, but another four were leaders in the effort to unionize campaign staff. Although several have called on Morales to suspend her campaign, and even to drop out of the race entirely, she said she has no intention of doing either as she downplayed the strife. Members of her campaign staff are still looking to unionize, and attention on their efforts has increased significantly since news of trouble in the Morales camp first broke.

See more here:
Back to school in NYC and GOP mayoral candidates duke it out - City & State

CAIRO Mysterious fires sank Irans largest warship and burned a big Tehran oil refinery on Wednesday seemingly unconnected blazes that nonetheless raised suspicions the country had once again been targeted by Israeli saboteurs.

The fires broke out hours apart as Iran was reporting progress in talks aimed at resurrecting the international nuclear agreement scrapped three years ago by the Trump administration, which the Biden administration wants to restore. Israel, which regards Iran as a dangerous adversary, opposes such an accord, contending it will not stop Iran from weaponizing nuclear fuel.

Revival of the accord would alleviate onerous economic sanctions imposed by the United States in exchange for guarantees that Iranian nuclear work remains peaceful.

Iran has sought to prevent recent acts of sabotage from derailing the nuclear negotiations. But it has acknowledged serious security holes and Israels infiltration abilities, including an explosion that wrecked part of its Natanz uranium enrichment complex less than two months ago.

Israel has tacitly acknowledged responsibility for the Natanz explosion and attacks on other Iranian nuclear facilities, as well as the brazen killing of a top nuclear scientist. It neither confirmed nor denied any role in the fires.

The blaze on the warship, the Kharg, broke out as the vessel was deployed in a Gulf of Oman training exercise. The Tasnim news agency described the Kharg as a training and logistical ship that had been in service for more than 40 years. The exact cause of the fire was unclear.

Military and civilian crews battled the fire for 20 hours before the ship sank off the coast of the southern port of Jask, Tasnim reported. The crew members managed to evacuate after the fire broke out and were transferred to shore, the report said, suggesting that there were no casualties.

The Kharg, also spelled Khark in English, serves as a naval replenishment ship and is Irans largest vessel by weight, according to an analysis of Irans navy.

Later Wednesday, a massive fire broke out at a large state-owned petrochemical refinery in south Tehran. Billowing plumes of smoke and flames could be seen from all corners of the capital more than 12 miles away.

The head of Tehrans emergency response committee, Mansour Darajati, said a leak in one of the pipelines carrying liquid gas had caught fire and caused an explosion, according to state media.

Iranian media accounts said at least 18 storage tankers were in flames and quoted Tehrans mayor as saying more than 100 fire trucks had been deployed from every Tehran firehouse to battle the inferno. Photos from Tehran also showed long lines of motorists at gasoline stations, reflecting fear of fuel shortages.

Although official Iranian media did not ascribe blame, the historical pattern was not lost on many Iranians, given the history of covert Israeli operations on Iranian targets. Just hours after the ship fire, the refinery blaze erupted.

We cant assess definitely what has happened it could be from structural damage or sabotage, said Saeed Shariati, a political analyst in Tehran. With our sensitivity there is always the possibility of an attack.

In April, an Iranian military vessel stationed in the Red Sea was damaged by an apparent Israeli mine attack, the first time Israeli-Iranian skirmishes at sea had affected an Iranian ship used for military purposes.

Political analysts outside Iran viewed the Kharg fire as more than a coincidence, even though some Iranian naval calamities have been accidental.

Obviously, the thing were all looking for is if the Israelis are involved, said Sanam Vakil, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham House, a research organization in Britain. The Israeli security establishment is using this period to define some new red lines vis--vis Iran and really demonstrate their capacity.

Israel, she added, has been sending a message to the United States and the region that it is willing to act independently in order to protect its security interests.

The Iranian port of Jask sits on the Gulf of Oman near the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane that leads to the Persian Gulf. It is an area where the fraught relations between Iran, the United States and its allies have played out. Beginning in 2019, ships in the Gulf of Oman suffered a series of maritime guerrilla attacks, crippling commercial oil tankers and spooking worldwide oil markets.

The United States said that the attacks were a tacit threat by Tehran to block the shipping artery and accused it of having targeted the ships with limpet mines, even releasing a video that showed members of Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps removing an unexploded mine from a vessel. Iran denied attacking the ships.

Yet Iran also has a history of naval disasters that are apparently unrelated to external enemies. During a military training exercise last year, a missile from an Iranian frigate mistakenly struck another ship near the same port, Jask, killing at least 19 sailors and wounding 15.

It may not be easy to distinguish clumsiness from obfuscation. Iran played down Israeli involvement in recent attacks in an effort to lower tensions and avoid acknowledging Israels successes, blaming instead internal sabotage.

Its bad if its their own fault, and its bad if the Israelis are behind it, Ms. Vakil said. Its embarrassing either way. So the question is: How are they going to spin this?

Vivian Yee reported from Cairo, and Farnaz Fassihi from New York.

Read more:
Fires Sink Irans Largest Warship and Ravage Big Refinery - The New York Times

LONDON The board game is roughly 4,500 years old. Shaped like a bird of prey, it has holes running down its wings and chest, where the pieces were once positioned. Its one of a few dozen ancient objects that were set to travel from the National Museum of Iran for a spectacular exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum here. But they never came.

Other artifacts that were set to be shown as detailed and illustrated and in the catalog for that exhibition Epic Iran included a gold mask, a long-handled silver pan and a carved stone goblet. To secure the loans, the museum was in longstanding talks with the National Museum of Iran until early 2020, said Tristram Hunt, the director of the Victoria & Albert Museum, also known as the V&A.

At a certain point, silence began to descend, and I dont think that was internal to them, he said in an interview. There were outside political forces.

Ironically, the overarching purpose of Epic Iran, according to Hunt, was to put aside the political tensions that have dogged relations between Iran and the West since the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of an Islamic Republic.

We want people to take a step back and understand that Iranian history didnt begin in 1979, he said. The point was to look beyond the paradigm of what is called Islamic fundamentalism, and concerns around nuclear testing and visions of the ayatollah, he added, and understand the richness, and breadth, and depth, and complexity, and beauty of Iran.

On display in the V&A show, which runs through Sept. 12, are an astounding array of artworks and treasures spanning 5,000 years: from the remnants of the earliest civilizations to the creations of contemporary artists living in Iran today. The full gamut of arts and crafts practiced for millenniums in Iran is illustrated with centuries-old carpets, illuminated manuscripts, miniature paintings, sculpted ornaments, court portraits and fine textiles.

More broadly, hostilities between Iran and the West were exacerbated during the presidency of Donald Trump. He pulled the United States out of a 2015 deal to curb Irans nuclear capability, toughened economic sanctions against Iran and ordered the killing in January 2020 of Irans most powerful security and intelligence commander, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani.

Cultural collaborations between Iran and the West have suffered as a result, said Nima Mina, who taught Iranian studies for 20 years at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

In post-Revolution Iran, everything has been politicized, he said. Cultural institutions and artists had to align with a certain ideological and political agenda, as artists did in the Soviet Union, he said.

The Islamic Republic is an ideological, autocratic regime, so its difficult to be apolitical, even if somebody tries, he said.

The V&A is not the only Western museum to try and fail to secure loans from Iran. In 2016, a long-planned Berlin exhibition of works from the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art was canceled when Iranian officials withheld export permits for the works. Half of these were by Western artists such as Picasso, Gauguin, Mark Rothko and Francis Bacon, and came from a collection assembled before the revolution by Irans empress, Farah Pahlavi.

Originally, the V&A under its former director, Martin Roth had planned to exhibit the private collection of the Sarikhanis, a British-based family from Iran who own hundreds of pieces of Iranian art and heritage. When Mr. Hunt took over the V&A in February 2017, he decided to turn the exhibition into something broader and more extensive, incorporating treasures from the collections of the V&A and other international museums.

One of the most important objects in the show has been lent to the V&A by the British Museum: the Cyrus Cylinder, a small clay tube from the sixth century B.C. that Cyrus the Great, the Persian Empires founder, buried under the walls of Babylon after he conquered it. Etched in cuneiform the writing of the ancient Babylonians the Cyrus Cylinder was a charter for good governance in which Cyrus pledged not to rule by oppression and dictatorship and tyranny, said the exhibitions co-curator, John Curtis, the British Museums former keeper of the Middle East department.

What the cylinder demonstrates is that Iran was a land of religious tolerance, and that it had enlightened rulers two and a half thousand years ago. The British Museum included it in a popular 2005 exhibition, Forgotten Empire, which also aimed to open Western minds to the countrys ancient culture and history.

That show received a very important loan from the National Museum of Iran: a silver tablet documenting the foundation of Persepolis, the Persian Empires capital city. The tablet traveled to London in the face of quite considerable press comments and complaints that the British couldnt be trusted to return them, said Neil MacGregor, the British Museums director at the time. In return, Iran asked to borrow the Cyrus Cylinder, which traveled to Iran in 2010, amid trepidation in London that it might never come back. (Those fears were unfounded: The priceless object was returned.)

As well as artifacts from Irans past, two rooms of Epic Iran on modern and contemporary art show that Iranians were active participants in 20th-century art movements, and today produce cutting-edge photography, painting and installations.

The high ratio of female artists on display including the photographers Shadi Ghadirian and Shirin Aliabadi demonstrates that Iranian women have transcended gender inequality and restrictions such as the compulsory veil to produce and display their work.

This final section of the show put together by the associate curator Ina Sarikhani Sandmann, whose family lent extensively to the exhibition also coincides with the most recent period in Iranian history, a period of revolution and still-raw divisions. Wall texts seem to reflect those tensions.

They refer to the monarchys authoritarian rule, its ties to economically exploitative Western powers, and its self-aggrandizing attempts to channel Irans pre-Islamic past, which incited dissent and led to the revolution. Post-revolutionary Iran, on the other hand, is described as being isolated and attempting to open up to the rest of the world despite hard line domestic policies and international economic sanctions.

The choice of words in reference to the Islamic Republic is very cautious, said Mina, the academic. He said it was probably out of a desire not to jeopardize Iran-based artists participating in the show. As a rule, painters, photographers, filmmakers, and sculptors in general had to be loyal, conformist, or at least not challenge the government to continue their art practice, he said.

Despite the loan setbacks, Hunt, the V&A director, said he hoped the show would pave the way to collaborations: The exhibition was always intended as a two-way exchange, he said.

It would always be nice to have a relationship with Tehran, which wed like to build on in the future, he added.

See the rest here:
Looking Beyond the Ayatollah to the Treasures of Iran - The New York Times

Reports that two Iranian frigates may be steaming into the Atlantic toward Venezuela ought to concentrate minds in the Biden Administration. So much for Iranian goodwill amid President Bidens determination to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal.

The vessels destination isnt clear, and they could still turn back. But when asked by reporters on Monday about U.S. monitoring of the frigates, an Iranian foreign ministry spokesman said Iran has constant presence in international waters, is entitled to this right on the basis of international law, and can be present in international waters. He added: I warn that nobody should make a miscalculation. Those who live in glass houses must be cautious.

Irans navy isnt the U.S. Sixth Fleet, but the entry of warships into Caribbean waters would be a notable provocation. If it sails into these waters without resistance, a precedent will be set for adversarial navies operating in the region. Dont be surprised if Russia and China decide to join the party in the future.

Iran is a long-time Cuban ally, and since Hugo Chvez turned Venezuela into a dictatorship 20 years ago, Tehran has nurtured an ever-closer relationship with Caracas. The two regimes have engaged in joint defense ventures in the Venezuelan state of Aragua, and Venezuela is known to supply fake identities to Iranian operatives to move around the region.

Venezuelas point man for Iran is Tareck El Aissami, now oil minister. Iran is an essential energy supplier for the South American basket case, where domestic gasoline production has collapsed amid a shortage of resources, maintenance failures and corruption.

Read more:
Irans Navy Heads to the Americas - The Wall Street Journal