Gentleman caught rolling through airport security with 23 pounds of cocaine in his wheelchair

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Originally published at: Gentleman caught rolling through airport security with 23 pounds of cocaine in his wheelchair | Boing Boing

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Was it Madison Cawthorn?

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holy crap. that’s a bold play.

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What an enormous waste of our resources. The Fed is actively trying to reduce wages right now citing “inflation” but we’ve got just endless money for driving up drug prices and throwing people in prison.

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It’s telling that they don’t say how the guy was caught. We know drug sniffing dogs don’t work (it’s all Clever Hans effect and they fail double-blinded tests to detect drugs). So this means they questioned the guy and got him to admit it? Why did they question him? Because he was a 22yo Dominican man in a wheelchair? That would be racial profiling, which is illegal. They had probable cause to cut apart his wheel chair? Because the dog sat down near him, feeling that his handler wanted him to? Why or why not?

So many questions that are conveniently never asked by press or answered by police in a situation like this. It boils down to copaganda when they only talk about the ends and not the means.

Also, don’t read the comments on the attached NY Post article. Yikes.

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Obligatory

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Most of the time cops are tipped off in advance by informants. There’s no way a rando Barney Fife customs cop making $13.75/hr would tear apart a guy’s wheelchair based on a hunch.

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I did not know that.

Will relax my tactics in future :slight_smile:

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I should really qualify that. I was being a bit glib, but drug (and bomb and cancer and everything else) sniffing dogs are dubious at best. While they are physiologically capable of smelling most of the things we use them to smell, their training is mostly resulting in them learning to take subtle cues from the handler about when to “signal”. When double-blind tested the way they are used in the real world, dogs fair no better than chance at finding drugs/bombs/etc.

They are jokingly referred to in law enforcement as “probable cause generators” because haha subverting civil rights is hilarious.

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Tip. When having to contend with airport security… floor it. (Volume up, please.)

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I’m going to remember that one.
Cheers

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