I’ve had several questions about the role of drug dogs at motor vehicle checkpoints. The details are below, but a quick summary of the law is as follows: (1) Officers can’t lawfully run drug dogs around every vehicle stopped at a checkpoint (2) Officers can lawfully run drug dogs around cars that are pulled out of line for additional investigation, so long as the use of dog doesn’t substantially lengthen the stop A checkpoint must have a proper motor vehicle purpose. A checkpoint is constitutional only if it has a valid “primary programmatic purpose,” which needs to be related to motor vehicle enforcement, like checking licenses or for impaired drivers. General crime control or drug interdiction aren’t valid purposes. City of Indianapolis v. Edmond, 531 U.S. 32 (2000). Using a drug dog on every car would strongly suggest an improper purpose. Courts consider how a checkpoint is actually operated when determining its purpose. If officers were to deploy a drug dog on every vehicle, a court would likely conclude that the primary purpose of the checkpoint was drug enforcement, not license verification or impaired driving detection. Cf. State v. Kincer, 208 N.C. App. 279 (2010) (unpublished) (finding that a judge correctly ruled that a checkpoint had a proper motor vehicle purpose in part because an officer testified that “there were no drug dogs present”). An out-of-state case on point is Com. v. Buchanon, 122 S.W.3d 565 (Ky. 2003), which ruled that a checkpoint was invalid: The presence of the drug dog [...]
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