Canines in the Courtroom

Wednesday, April 23, 2025

Where:
St. John’s County Sheriff’s Office
911 Law Enforcement Way
St. Augustine, FL 32092

When:
Wednesday April 23, 2025
Class Hours 0800 to 1700
Registration / check-in at 0730 hrs)

Cost:
$179 per person

Contact:
Jeff Barrett (863) 529-5113
Jeff.Barrett@hitsk9.net

Host:
Sgt. Craig Maguire
cmaguire@sjso.org

Instructors:
Deputy Sheriff, Andy Weiman (ret.) and Prosecuting Attorney, Ted Daus (ret.)

DOGS ARE NOT NEEDED. This is a lecture only course.

HITS Training & Consulting is hosting a one day training course for all Law Enforcement Drug Dog Teams. This 8 hour course is designed specifically to enhance your skills at articulating necessary facts which are important to showing K9 reliability during court proceedings. Expert witness and seasoned K9 handler, Andy Weiman from the Broward County Sheriff’s office has developed this course as a way to make each handler a winner in the courtroom. Bulletproofing your drug dog cases is a skill that can be learned, just like handling your police dog. Andy will walk you through each critical selling point that makes your drug dog cases much stronger in the courtroom.

Ted Daus

Ted Daus was a prosecutor in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He has been a prosecutor for the past 29 ½ years, the last 25 of which he has been assigned to the Drug Trafficking Unit. He has extensive experience as a lecturer on K-9 search and seizure. He lectures regularly all across the country to National Canine Organizations such as U.S.P.C.A., N.P.C.A. & N.A.P.W.D.A. He taught law school for 8 years as an adjunct Professor at Nova Southeastern School of Law. Ted was also counsel of record for the two United States Supreme Court Cases K9 cases: Florida vs. Harris and Florida vs. Jardines. Ted helps organize and run HITS, the nation’s most successful national police K9 conference.

Andrew Weiman

With more than 33 years of police experience involving various assignments in specialty drug investigation unit in south Florida, Detective Weiman has become a leading expert in the field. With 27 years of K9 experience since training his first drug dog with Canadian Customs, Andy has gone on to oversee the training of a variety of detector dogs to include teams that can find drugs, currency cell phones, tobacco and firearms.

Andy’s education and experience with police dog training has steered his career path into developing an industry leading recordkeeping software program called PackTrack. His depth of knowledge and understanding of state and federal laws regarding search and seizure has been an enormous asset to hundreds of K-9 handlers who attend his K-9 training courses. Andy’s ability to teach detection canines was refined through over a decade of training for MCTFT Multi-Jurisdictional Counter Drug Task Force Training Center. Andy taught thousands of handlers all over the US and its territories. Andy has served on the editorial advisory board for Police K-9 Magazine and created HITS, the training conference known for its breadth of diversified K9 training lectures. Andy was a co-author of the book “Canines in the Courtroom” used by handlers, trainers, and supervisors as reference material for training courses.

Andy’s expert opinions on drug dogs and recordkeeping will surely help bring the entire law enforcement K9 industry to a higher level of clarity. His countless court appearances and proven skills as an expert witness on the stand are clear testimony to the effectiveness of proper K9 recordkeeping as a means to establishing K9 reliability. As a K9 trainer and handler with the Broward County Sheriff’s Office in Florida, Andy continues to educate others through his direct oversight of the training.

Our Instructors will cover the essentials of K-9 learning theory so that each K-9 Handler has a clearer understanding of why and how their dog consistently performs every time he locates drug odors. This type of information is vital to a police K-9 Handler. When trying to convince a judge, a jury and a prosecutor that your trained police dog’s alert is probable cause for a warrantless search, training records are vital. Every K-9 Handler must learn how to articulately convey how and why they are certain that their dog is well trained and reliable. Our class provides each student with this critical information.

The best dog training techniques in the world won’t win a conviction in court if it’s not properly documented and presented. Learn from the experts what drug dog record keeping really means and how to present it to your prosecutors and the courts as proof of your dog’s reliability. HITS Training & Consulting instructors will discuss the latest legal updates affecting police drug dogs.

The topics taught in this class are some of the most valuable tools a Drug Dog Handler can have in his arsenal. More cases are lost because of the inability of the Handler to adequately demonstrate that the performance of his Police Dog rises to the level of Probable Cause. Come train with us and don’t let all your hard work go down the drain.

Jeff Barrett
National Director for Field Training Operations

Make checks payable to: HITS Training & Consulting

Mail to: PO Box 1438 – Lecanto FL 34460
CALL (863-529-5113)

Credit card payments are accepted

(No refunds—Substitutions are permitted)

Students will receive a certificate of attendance for
“Canines in the Courtroom”