DOUGLAS COUNTY DEPUTY DOUG WOODS, LEFT, helps Cpl. Ed Swanson train Gero, the county's crime-fighting German shepherd.

Gero, the county’s crime-fighting German shepherd, has a nose for drugs. He can sniff out cocaine, marijuana, heroin, methamphetamine, ecstasy and OxyContin.

“We think he’s extremely important to the work that we do,” said Lt. Kathy Tate, a spokeswoman for the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office.

But is he a hairy, four-legged invasion of privacy? The U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t think so.

The court in January gave police broader search powers during traffic stops, ruling in an Illinois case that drug-sniffing dogs – like Gero – can be used to check out motorists even if officers have no reason to suspect they may be carrying narcotics.

But Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the 6-2 majority, warned that police officers can’t unnecessarily prolong a traffic stop to wait for the arrival of a drug dog.

That would seem to fit the practice of the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office. The department has used Gero to sniff around at drunken-driving checkpoints, local officials said when the case went to the Supreme Court in November. But they said they didn’t make mere speeders wait around for Gero’s arrival.

Instead, Gero accompanies Cpl. Ed Swanson on his patrols throughout Douglas County. Swanson and Gero also assist the Lawrence and Eudora police departments, as well as other area law enforcement agencies, when they need help on a drug-related search warrant.

“A lot of times when he’s called in, it’s for a search warrant,” Tate said. “So probable cause has already been established.”

She didn’t have statistics readily available on how often sniffs by Gero resulted in criminal charges.

Privacy advocates said the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures made it unfair for a dog to turn a traffic stop into a drug investigation.

“Under today’s decision, every traffic stop could become an occasion to call in the dogs, to the distress and embarrassment of the law-abiding population,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in a dissent, citing the danger that police could soon conduct “suspicionless, dog-accompanied drug sweeps” of parked cars or cars stopped at red lights.