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Saturday, May 29, 2021

Police retirement wave happening in Virginia. Among drug sniffing dogs. Pot is legalized, and the old dogs would have to learn new tricks, else - retirement

 Strib carrying AP feed:

In Virginia, the rush to take marijuana-detecting dogs out of service began even before lawmakers voted last month to accelerate the timetable for legalization. A separate law that went into effect in March prohibits police from stopping or searching anyone based solely on the odor of marijuana.

Virginia state police are retiring 13 K-9s, while many smaller police departments and sheriff's offices are retiring one or two dogs. Most are in the process of purchasing and training new dogs to detect only illicit drugs, including cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines. Some departments are unable to afford up to $15,000 to buy and train a new dog, so they are disbanding their K-9 units.

The dogs trained on multiple drugs alert in the same way for all of them, so it's impossible to tell whether they are indicating the presence of marijuana or an illicit drug. The dogs also cannot distinguish between a small, legal amount of marijuana or a larger, still-illegal amount of the drug. For police, that means they can no longer be used to establish probable cause for a search.

"We won't use our dogs trained in marijuana because that could be a defense an attorney would raise for a client, to say, 'Which odor did the K-9 alert on — was it marijuana or was it an illegal drug?" said Bedford County Sheriff Mike Miller.

Using a dog that has been trained to detect all drugs except marijuana can help "guarantee he didn't hit on marijuana, that he found heroin or something else," Miller said.