The U.S. Supreme Court ruled this week that police officers cannot extend traffic stops to wait for drug-sniffing K-9s to inspect vehicles.
However, the Aiken Department of Public Safety said the ruling won't drastically change its policies, which were in place before the justices' ruling.
The justices voted 6 to 3 that law enforcement can still use K-9s at traffic stops as long as there is reasonable suspicion.
"We believe that we were already operating well within the court's guidelines," Lt. Jake Mahoney said. "They're a tool. We're by no means reliant (on K-9s)."
The case, Rodriguez v. United States, began when a Nebraska law enforcement officer initiated a traffic stop. After tending to everything related to the stop, the officer, Morgan Struble, asked the driver, Dennys Rodriguez, for permission to walk a K-9 around the vehicle. When Rodriguez refused, Struble detained him and waited for a second officer to decide. Struble retrieved his dog to conduct a sniff search of the vehicle, which led to the officers finding methamphetamine.
Seven or eight minutes elapsed from the time Struble issued the warning for the traffic violation until the dog alerted, and Rodriguez was indicted on federal drug charges.
"(Rodriguez) moved to suppress the evidence seized from his car on the ground, among others, that Struble had prolonged the traffic stop without reasonable suspicion in order to conduct the dog sniff," the ruling states. A magistrate "found that no reasonable suspicion supported the detention once Struble issued the written warning," but ruled the extension of the stop by "seven to eight minutes" for the dog sniff was only a "de minimis" intrusion on Rodriguez's Fourth Amendment rights and therefore permissible.
"We hold that a police stop exceeding the time needed to handle the matter for which the stop was made violates the Constitution's shield against unreasonable seizures," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in the majority opinion.
Aiken Public Safety has three drug-detection K-9s and is looking to purchase a fourth in order to have a K-9 on each shift.
Mahoney said the agency reviewed its policy after the Supreme Court ruling and found it was in line with it.
The department's policy dictates K-9s only can be used to sniff a vehicle when "reasonable suspicion exists to believe the operator or passengers are in possession of illegal narcotics;" or "during a valid vehicle stop, the canine is used to sniff the vehicle's exterior in an exploratory manner."
Unless the dog alerts to the vehicle, the policy states, the operator may not be detained "longer than necessary to conclude the business associated with the initial stop."
Drug-sniffing K-9s also can be used to search in public areas where there is no expectation of privacy.
Mahoney emphasized that a drug-sniffing K-9 only can be called to a vehicle stop after the officer has established "reasonable suspicion" that someone in the vehicle has illegal narcotics.
"Before we call a K-9 or bring a K-9 into the equation, the officer already has to have met our threshold," Mahoney said. "I can't just randomly call for a K-9 and have you wait or hold you there while I wait for that K-9 to walk around, just because I can. You've got to have some kind of reasonable suspicion. It's what a reasonable person would believe based on the observations; you don't have to be an expert in law enforcement."
Reasonable suspicion could include the smell of drugs or narcotics, visible evidence or residue of drugs or paraphernalia from the officer's viewpoint or signs of impairment in the driver. "There's not one key that tips the balance. It is all those put together," he said.
Teddy Kulmala covers the crime and courts beat for the Aiken Standard and has been with the newspaper since August 2012. He is a native of Williston and majored in communication studies at Clemson University.