K-9 units faced some competition from human crime sniffers in Des Moines, Iowa, after three officers claimed olfactory prowess during a traffic stop on October 5, 2019. Court documents from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit revealed that the officers claimed to detect marijuana while driving behind the defendant, Vernon Shumaker.
The officers testified that they detected less than one gram of marijuana in a closed container coming from a moving car, a football field's length away, while a hefty breeze cut across traffic. They supposedly picked up the scent of burning marijuana through the open windows of their patrol car and pinpointed the source to a specific vehicle, two cars ahead of them.
