Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2014 June 25

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June 25

If chewing gum is chewed, the chewer is pursued, and in the hoosgow hidden

What's a hoosgow? Or if I misspelled it, what's the right spelling, and what is it? Nyttend (talk) 04:18, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

"hoosegow: North American INFORMAL. A prison." [1] AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:21, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

apparently from Spanish juzgado ‘judged’. —Tamfang (talk) 07:09, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

"Hoosegow: a place to incarcerate thieves of vowels from defenseless words." Clarityfiend (talk) 09:05, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

And there's its French cousin, "calaboose". These riddles are easy. They're like duck soup. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:26, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

French? Calaboose < Spanish calabozo, "dungeon". Deor (talk) 19:40, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, but filtered through Louisiana French.[2] Presumably the calabozo contained the bozos who had committed crimes. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:11, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Cadaver dogs

We have an interesting missing person case here in Detroit, where 12 year old Charlie Bothuell was just found, alive, in his father's basement. The odd thing is that the police had previous searched the house, with cadaver dogs, and found nothing. So, my question is, would a cadaver dog alert when it smells a hidden live person, or are they trained to ignore such "distractions" ? StuRat (talk) 21:12, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Seems logical that it wouldn't. Charlie probably doesn't smell all that different from other people. If the dog's consistently following people smell, he's not going to be much help finding death stench. Training a dog to do anything just naturally requires them to focus on whatever that is. All part of the same deal. If they know what they're meant to find, they know to ignore everything else. A whitelist sort of thing.

Same goes for humans. If you want your kid to peel potatoes, you don't hand him a knife and list all the things he shouldn't cut. Once he recognizes unpeeled potatoes sitting on the counter, he eventually knows that doesn't mean "peel the dog". When the dog smells death, he reacts. If not, he doesn't.

Anyway, you might want to ask these guys or read about Solo. InedibleHulk (talk) 08:57, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

But why would they search the place with cadaver dogs, when they didn't know whether the boy was dead or alive at that point? --Viennese Waltz 09:10, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

In such cases, there are effectively three possibilites at any relevant location: (1) the victim is alive and present (2) the victim is dead and present or (3) the victim is absent. If you can rule out (2) pretty swiftly, it simplifies the investigation. AlexTiefling (talk) 09:30, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Plus, remember that comparatively few individuals in missing-persons cases live very long; the Elizabeth Smart case was highly unusual in that she disappeared for a long time and was found alive. If the kid had been missing long enough that they were suspicious of his father (running cadaver dogs in a relative's house definitely isn't the initial part of a missing-persons search!), he'd definitely been gone long enough that they expected him to be dead. Nyttend (talk) 12:07, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Yeah but I wonder if the media reports (which I presume is where StuRat got his information from; I've checked Google News and that is indeed what they're saying) that the police were using cadaver dogs were accurate. Maybe they were just regular police dogs. --Viennese Waltz 12:15, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/missing-detroit-boy-charlie-bothuell-found-dads-basement-n141351 is a story about the incident; the city police chief is responsible for saying that they were cadaver dogs, so it's not likely an exaggeration. Nyttend (talk) 12:18, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Yea, but the police chief doesn't seem very bright, so he may have gotten it wrong. He consistently said the boy was hiding behind a "5 gallon drum", when he meant a 55 gallon drum. Obviously, nobody could hide behind a 5 gallon drum, but he didn't seem to know that. He must have misheard it when somebody competent listed the size, but was unable to reason that such a small drum is not something you can hide behind. StuRat (talk) 16:13, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Maybe the boy is very small for his age. —Tamfang (talk) 19:09, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Maybe if he was Tom Thumb. StuRat (talk) 19:32, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Or learned the Behind a Stick trick. InedibleHulk (talk) 01:25, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

I haven't really studied the case and God knows the media doesn't always get these small details correct. But if they really were using cadaver dogs, from what I understand, cadaver dogs are trained to search for decomposing remains. So it's not the type of situation that you'd see where they have the dog sniff a sock or something that was worn by the person and he's looking specifically for that person. The dog doesn't know who he's looking for, he just knows he's looking for "dead". Does that make sense? Now, admittedly, I'm not an expert on this type of thing, but this is what I've read about cadaver dogs. Personally, from a non-expert standpoint, I'd think it would be very difficult for a non-cadaver dog to pick up a scent from a person in the home where they live because their scent is on everything. Secondly, I'm not sure why you'd do it. I mean, how big can this basement possibly be? My assumption is that the kid simply wasn't in the basement when the police searched it earlier. Unless they're hoarders or something, why wouldn't you notice a huge barricade? I'm assuming they took him somewhere else and then moved him back within the last few days. Definitely a crazy ass situation. Bali88 (talk) 19:44, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

A small basement can often hide a larger dungeon/crypt, behind boards or bricks. A tiny crack may be virtually invisible to humans, and the small bit of air it lets through will have too faint a scent. But a dog may get a whiff and tell someone with opposable thumbs to grab a pickaxe. InedibleHulk (talk) 01:36, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Also, something else to remember, I do a lot of wrongful conviction advocacy work and testimony about dogs alerting to things are among the more unreliable "sciences" out there. Dogs can do a lot of things we can't. They have more powerful sniffers than we do, but, like us, they aren't infalliable. They also can't talk. So we also have the person in charge of them who can fail in several ways. Giving them clues as to when to alert, etc. When I was in college, a friend of mine had some weed on him...I don't remember the situation...but a drug sniffing dog just walked right past him and didn't alert. Dogs are helpful tools, but they aren't perfect. Bali88 (talk) 19:53, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

My school brought in a weed dog twice, and both times it kept sitting at students who just smelled like it because they puffed at lunch, not because they had any. A few skunky people were searched, nothing found. Something like a smoke screen. InedibleHulk (talk) 01:42, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

So this is an interesting twist... (copied and pasted):

"Action News has also learned of a new twist in the case. The uncle of Monique Dillard-Bothuell, Charlie's stepmother, has a listed address three doors away from where the search had been going on. That home is the end unit of the same condominium building. The units are connected by an underground hallway. Charlie's stepmother's uncle is Detroit attorney Godfrey Dillard. Action News reached him on the phone to ask about the case and Monique and he refused to comment." Bali88 (talk) 21:20, 26 June 2014 (UTC)