Problems with police dogs = problems with EAR "writings"
Feb 10, 2018 16:31:49 GMT
Any of N, greenapple, and 1 more like this
Post by rkz on Feb 10, 2018 16:31:49 GMT
Hello - forgive me if this topic has been brought up here before.
My understanding is that a police dog was sniffing in an area where LE *thought* EAR *may* have parked his car near an attack, and that the 6th grade paper, the "punishment" map, and the Custer essay were found.
Since first finding out about this case, I've long been fascinated and somewhat skeptical of the "writings" associated with EAR/ONS. Specifically: there is so much speculation and possibility for error involved in tying the crimes of the EAR/ONS to the available writings. Apart from the guesswork involved in tying this specific location to the EAR (how did police *know* that this is where EAR parked his car after attack 43 in Danville?), there is also the issue of the unreliability of sniffing dogs w/r/t police work. This is a New York Times article from 2002 describing the many times police dogs fail the smell test (so to speak):
www.nytimes.com/2002/12/24/science/with-dog-detectives-mistakes-can-happen.html
When dogs are asked to identify people, the situation is even more complex. This use of dogs is based on assumptions that every person has a unique scent, that odor is stable over time and that dogs can tell one person from another. But the first two assumptions have not been fully verified and the last is not always true, said Dr. Adee Schoon, scientific adviser to the Netherlands National Police Agency Canine Department....
...Scent identification in Holland is now conducted under controlled circumstances to minimize human and dog errors. Investigators ask the suspect and six ''foils,'' who have had no involvement in the crime, to hold small steel tubes briefly.
The tubes are then lined up on a platform in parallel rows of seven each in a pattern unknown to the handler. The dog's task is then to match a scent from the crime scene to tubes in two rows.
The dog performs two tests, the first to prove that its nose is on target and that it has no interest in the scent of the suspect, by tracking down the tubes touched by a foil.
In the second, it identifies the suspect, if that person's scent is present, from scents taken at a crime scene. The dog works off its leash to minimize the handler's influence. ''All kinds of problems'' arise when a dog is asked to match scent to an actual person, Dr. Schoon said. For one thing, she said, the handler may unconsciously direct the dog toward a particular suspect.
Dogs are also known to become fixated on people for no apparent reason and to return to them again and again, Dr. Schoon said. Without the first test run in which the dog is asked to find another ''suspect'' in the same group, it is very difficult to tell when a dog is becoming fixated for no apparent reason, she added.
Experts say other problems can emerge when the dog is faced with only one person. Because dogs are regularly rewarded for choosing suspects in training, they are predisposed to say yes when asked to match scents in situations involving only one potential suspect, experts say. It takes time to train an animal to say no in such cases.
If you google "problems sniffing dogs" or "dogs sniff mistake" or similar search terms, you'll find hosts of articles detailing the many mistakes that are often made by police dogs:
www.google.com/search?q=sniffing+dog+mistakes&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b
It's now known to be such a problem that judges sometimes throw cases out because of false identifications made by sniffing dogs.
So, knowing that the method of "profiling" performed by scent dogs is far less reliable than most people believe, and knowing that the standards for police dog training in the 1970s was, by definition, much more lax than current standards - and finally, knowing that the idea that EAR's car was on the scene of the Danville attack in the first place was speculation on the part of detectives at the scene on 12/9/78 - how is it possible to determine with any kind of certainty that the papers found at that scene could be tied to EAR/ONS in any possible way? I would wager that the detectives who tied the papers to EAR found thematic similarities in the 6th grade paper (i.e. deep-seated and long-standing anger and evident emotional problems described therein) to the EAR's activities and the viciousness with which he carried out those activities. And they evidently thought the hand-drawn map *could be* EAR's own way of scouting out locations and stalking victims. But it seems to me that any 100% positive identification of these materials as being the work of EAR is speculative at best.
The reason why I bring this up is that trying to figure out who the EAR was based on these writings could prove to be a matter of barking up the wrong tree. I know that without actually finding the EAR alive, there's really no 100% foolproof way of tying the EAR to those papers, but the more research I do into EAR, the more I feel like the existence of these papers is problematic. And furthermore, doing research on the state of scent dog police work in previous decades leads me to believe that whatever "evidence" there is tying the EAR to these papers is paper-thin.
My understanding is that a police dog was sniffing in an area where LE *thought* EAR *may* have parked his car near an attack, and that the 6th grade paper, the "punishment" map, and the Custer essay were found.
Since first finding out about this case, I've long been fascinated and somewhat skeptical of the "writings" associated with EAR/ONS. Specifically: there is so much speculation and possibility for error involved in tying the crimes of the EAR/ONS to the available writings. Apart from the guesswork involved in tying this specific location to the EAR (how did police *know* that this is where EAR parked his car after attack 43 in Danville?), there is also the issue of the unreliability of sniffing dogs w/r/t police work. This is a New York Times article from 2002 describing the many times police dogs fail the smell test (so to speak):
www.nytimes.com/2002/12/24/science/with-dog-detectives-mistakes-can-happen.html
When dogs are asked to identify people, the situation is even more complex. This use of dogs is based on assumptions that every person has a unique scent, that odor is stable over time and that dogs can tell one person from another. But the first two assumptions have not been fully verified and the last is not always true, said Dr. Adee Schoon, scientific adviser to the Netherlands National Police Agency Canine Department....
...Scent identification in Holland is now conducted under controlled circumstances to minimize human and dog errors. Investigators ask the suspect and six ''foils,'' who have had no involvement in the crime, to hold small steel tubes briefly.
The tubes are then lined up on a platform in parallel rows of seven each in a pattern unknown to the handler. The dog's task is then to match a scent from the crime scene to tubes in two rows.
The dog performs two tests, the first to prove that its nose is on target and that it has no interest in the scent of the suspect, by tracking down the tubes touched by a foil.
In the second, it identifies the suspect, if that person's scent is present, from scents taken at a crime scene. The dog works off its leash to minimize the handler's influence. ''All kinds of problems'' arise when a dog is asked to match scent to an actual person, Dr. Schoon said. For one thing, she said, the handler may unconsciously direct the dog toward a particular suspect.
Dogs are also known to become fixated on people for no apparent reason and to return to them again and again, Dr. Schoon said. Without the first test run in which the dog is asked to find another ''suspect'' in the same group, it is very difficult to tell when a dog is becoming fixated for no apparent reason, she added.
Experts say other problems can emerge when the dog is faced with only one person. Because dogs are regularly rewarded for choosing suspects in training, they are predisposed to say yes when asked to match scents in situations involving only one potential suspect, experts say. It takes time to train an animal to say no in such cases.
If you google "problems sniffing dogs" or "dogs sniff mistake" or similar search terms, you'll find hosts of articles detailing the many mistakes that are often made by police dogs:
www.google.com/search?q=sniffing+dog+mistakes&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b
It's now known to be such a problem that judges sometimes throw cases out because of false identifications made by sniffing dogs.
So, knowing that the method of "profiling" performed by scent dogs is far less reliable than most people believe, and knowing that the standards for police dog training in the 1970s was, by definition, much more lax than current standards - and finally, knowing that the idea that EAR's car was on the scene of the Danville attack in the first place was speculation on the part of detectives at the scene on 12/9/78 - how is it possible to determine with any kind of certainty that the papers found at that scene could be tied to EAR/ONS in any possible way? I would wager that the detectives who tied the papers to EAR found thematic similarities in the 6th grade paper (i.e. deep-seated and long-standing anger and evident emotional problems described therein) to the EAR's activities and the viciousness with which he carried out those activities. And they evidently thought the hand-drawn map *could be* EAR's own way of scouting out locations and stalking victims. But it seems to me that any 100% positive identification of these materials as being the work of EAR is speculative at best.
The reason why I bring this up is that trying to figure out who the EAR was based on these writings could prove to be a matter of barking up the wrong tree. I know that without actually finding the EAR alive, there's really no 100% foolproof way of tying the EAR to those papers, but the more research I do into EAR, the more I feel like the existence of these papers is problematic. And furthermore, doing research on the state of scent dog police work in previous decades leads me to believe that whatever "evidence" there is tying the EAR to these papers is paper-thin.
