AMARILLO, TEXAS Have you ever wondered how often officers are right when they suspect a vehicle they've pulled over has drugs inside?Every year we report many stories where the Texas Department of Safety calls out a K-9 unit to look for drugs. We asked the DPS to release the data from 2010 on those K-9 searches, to see how often they actually find them. Here's the results that they sent us.
In 2010 the DPS called out for a total of 286 searches, and in 226 of those cases the dog found something. That means they had a 79% success rate. These numbers reflect only DPS K-9 units activity.
The DPS says that in the 60 cases where nothing was found, it doesn't necessarily mean that no drugs were in the vehicle. Their report to us says the trooper may not have been able to find drugs, or there could have been residual odors in the vehicle. It also states that sometimes currency is seized and then returned to the suspect, and that shows in the report as a no-find.
We requested to see one of their dogs in action, but we were told that it is against DPS policy to do drug dog demonstrations.
