Should he be called to the witness stand, someone as impulsive as Nero can bark at the imposing justices of the United States Supreme Court. And that each one interprets it in his own way.
Nero is a Malinois, a Belgian shepherd dog, described as short-haired (light brown, reddish, or gray in color, with shades of black at the tips), medium-sized, and square in appearance, often confused with the shepherd. German. In the opinion of specialists, it is a very intelligent and obedient animal. This time, however, it seems that he was carried away by emotions in the fulfillment of his work obligations.
In the task of what is called K-9, that is, the practice of acting as a police dog, Nero has gotten into trouble. Maybe he doesn't understand anything, smart as he is, since he didn't do more than what he is supposed to do. It started in 2019, when he stuck his paws in the door of a vehicle that had been ordered to stop by his uniformed colleagues after the driver erratically skipped three lanes.
It happened in Mountain Home, in the state of Idaho. The Malinois applied what he learned in his training and activated his olfactory abilities in front of a bottle of pills and a plastic bag in which there was residue of methamphetamine, one of the deadliest illegal substances in the US today, along with fentanyl, which cause of an epidemic of lethal overdoses.
Their initiative provided the evidence to obtain a warrant to search the motel room where the driver, Kirby Dorff, was staying, where they found more evidence. The detainee was charged with a felony drug possession. A police success? The point is that Nero's legs on the door and the outline of him inside the car to have a better olfactory position have opened a question that has reached the highest judicial authority in the country. If he accepts the summary, the Supreme Court must decide whether the fact that the dog touched the car violates the fourth amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable searches.
The Idaho High Court previously ruled that Nero's outburst amounted to an unwarranted and warrantless warrant. The judges annulled the conviction in the first instance that was imposed on Dorff due to a procedural error. The K-9 violated the constitutional rights of the driver, they remarked. Nero, with his uniformed guide, twice surrounded the vehicle. In the second, the animal jumped several times on the car, which was recorded in the police recording.
The state court noted that the dog was free to sniff the air around the vehicle, but that did not give it permission to try to get inside without a judge's order. In their resolution, they compared the situations between a dog that rubs its tail against the bumper when passing by and another in which, "without privilege or consent", it approaches the car to jump on its roof, sit on its hood or lean on it. on your window or door.
There is disparity of criteria in the Supreme Court. In 2013, he said Miami-Dade County police violated the Fourth Amendment by unleashing a K-9 around the home of a suspected marijuana grower. In another summary, that same year, the magistrates ruled by a majority that it was correct for the uniformed officers to use a dog to sniff out a truck at a routine traffic stop. But since then, four members of the highest court have been replaced.
The experts advocated the need for a resolution, since these are relevant cases to understand the limits of police investigation under the fourth amendment. For Don Slavik, executive director of the United States Police Canine Association, K-9s stand on their hind legs while putting their front legs on the car to gain balance when sniffing. Once they detect a scent, Slavik stressed in USA Today, the animal always gets as close to the scent as possible.
So Nero, following his instincts, was more of a dog than a policeman.
