July 2001 Volume 82 Number 7
"serving the protectors"
| July 2001 Volume 82 Number 7 "serving the protectors" |
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Partners in Fighting Crime |
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| By John Ballantyne |
Senior Constable Jeff Wight, 29, will never forget catching his first offender with the aid of a police dog.
Two youths had stolen a car from Kent Town in the early hours last April, and had led police on a high-speed chase along North Terrace, Adelaide.
After crashing their car on Port Road, the pair ran off and hid in the parklands not far from Thebarton police barracks.
A police patrol chased them on foot but soon lost sight of them.
Wight - a former patrol officer, who had just completed 14 weeks’ training with SAPOL’s Dog Operations Unit - was out on his first week of night-shift. He and his dog Charlie arrived in the parklands, and very soon found both teenage car-thieves hiding in the bushes.
One of the youths tried to escape, but was quickly captured by police on Port Road. The other, however, was in no mood to resist. According to Wight, “he just basically lay there and gave up.”
Wight recalls the scene vividly – the youth “absolutely petrified” of the German Shepherd who stood over him, barking and growling menacingly. The youth just kept pleading frantically: “Get the dog off me! Get the dog away from me!”
As many criminals and prison escapees have found over the years, police dogs can be a highly effective arm of law-enforcement.
It is not that the dogs are necessarily violent – very few offenders are ever injured by police dogs – but, in Wight’s words, “they are fairly persuasive.”
SAPOL’s Dog Operations Unit, based at Thebarton barracks, has been operating since 1973. It presently has a dozen German Shepherds trained for general-purpose duties, such as finding persons, property and drugs. The unit also has five Labradors - originally from Australian Customs - three of which specialize in detecting drugs, and two in detecting firearms and explosives
The German Shepherds, in addition to undertaking standard training in obedience and tracking, are also given special exercises to build their confidence in tackling any obstacles they may come across in the operational field. They therefore have to complete an agility course which consists of hurdles, long jump, open window, tunnel, and stacked drums.
There are also special role-playing exercises in which police handlers take turns being “criminals”, for which they have to wear special arm-padding to protect them against dog-bites. These practice sessions can be quite realistic.
“It’s fairly intense,” says Wight. “You’ve got this dog – a 40-kilo dog – charging at you, and he’s biting on the arm.”
Another handler, Senior Constable Matt Nairn, recalls when he apprehended two offenders who had escaped from the Elizabeth police cells last May. The escapees, both in their early to mid-20s, had recently been arrested for numerous house break-ins.
Special police cordons, both static and mobile, were set up, with numerous patrols on hand. Overhead there hovered a police helicopter - which, even if it was unable to detect the offenders, would at least deter the escapees from breaking their cover for fear that they were being watched from above.
Nairn and his dog Tyson managed to find both offenders. The first was hiding in bushes near a motel swimming-pool off Main North Road. The second was hiding up a pine-tree, his body wrapped around the tree-trunk some 25 to 30 feet above the ground.
Neither offender was visible to the helicopter in the air above. In both instances it was the dog who led police to the offenders.
Nairn, who for many years has had a recreational interest in dogs, says: “What always fascinates me is the ability of the dog to do something which we simply can’t do as humans. Whether we have helicopters with infra-red or otherwise, they still can’t do what the dog can do - and that is, by scent, find someone hiding.”
Scientific tests conducted in Germany have demonstrated that a German Shepherd’s scenting ability is a million times greater than a human’s. The dog, says Nairn, has the ability to “break down different components” of an odour. This enables the dog to be able readily to distinguish the odour of an anxious or fearful fugitive from that of other humans in the vicinity.
“The dogs actually home in on that,” explains Nairn. “They will actually ignore a lot of other odours, and pick up on that... (The dog) will want to take the handler to the position where he believes the odour’s coming from. We call it ‘working the odour’. He will actually work in on a ‘scent cone’, back and forth, into the wind, and moving in the direction. And then it’s really up to the handler working with the dog, getting by obstacles, which may be fences, into the area where the offender is.”
German Shepherds have other well-developed senses which also come into play. As they are predominantly hunting-pack animals, their eyes can detect the slightest movement at night. Their hearing is four times as acute as that of humans.
Nairn describes how the dogs “have the ability to radar their ears in on movement by sound.”
Trained dogs are valued especially for the time they save police.
The Dog Operations Unit’s current training officer, Senior Constable Ian Hunter, says: “When you’re searching a big area, you might think you’ve got offenders in a cordoned area. It may take coppers doing it manually three or four hours. We can go in there with a dog and it may take half an hour.”
Handlers acknowledge, of course, that dogs cannot perform their tasks without the valued contribution of other police sections.
Senior Constable Darryn Conroy says: “It’s not just the training that we put into the dogs and how we deploy them. But it’s the information that we receive from the patrols, and how they set their cordons out, that will more or less lead to success. Without their assistance, most of our members wouldn’t find them (offenders). So they do a pretty good job.”
The partnership between handler and dog is crucial to the success of their work together.
The dog, says Nairn, “looks to the handler for everything - for praise, for food, for company. German Shepherds are pack-animals and they see the handler as the dominant male.”
Hunter adds: “The dogs are taught to protect their handler. But I think it’s a two-way street. The handler’s there to protect the dog as well... It’s no different to having a partner. You’re not going to stand back and let him get belted.”
To consolidate this bond between man and dog, each dog lives at the home of its police handler and becomes virtually a member of the family.
This entails extra duties for the police handler, for which he receives some compensation from the police department. The dog has to be exercised for at least an hour every day, and undergo regular health check-ups.
“There are a lot more impositions on your home life, having a police dog and having to care for him,” says Wight. “(You’re) not being able to just nick off for a weekend whenever you want. You’ve got to make sure that he’s looked after.”
Hunter says: “The handler is responsible for the dog. Basically, he’s given ownership of the dog. Once you’re given a dog, he’s your responsibility. Even after he retires, he’s still your responsibility until he dies.”
A stable home environment is essential, not only for a dog’s happiness, but also for its operational preparedness.
Nairn describes how, when he gets a call in the middle of the night, asking him to go to a task, his dog Tyson is always prepared.
“By the time you get your uniform on, pull your boots on and open the back door,” says Nairn, “the dog’s usually standing waiting at the door ready to go out. He’s heard all the commotion and he knows he’s off and is ready to work from that point forward.
“And equally so if you’re working night-shift. The dog will sleep during the day, the same as we do, and be ready to work the next night.
“And that’s another great aspect of having your dog at home. He can be kept on your schedule, as opposed to if he was kennelled elsewhere, he’d be awake all day with other dogs. At home he’s got an environment where it’s quiet for the handler, and it’s quiet for the dog to sleep.”
Particularly important is the special bond which enables the police handler to “read” his dog.
Nairn says: “We can trust that dog, as we do, with our lives, because of that bond... We read our dogs as to what they’re doing, and they feed that information back to us when we’re working with them.
“We know what the dog’s thinking and what he’s doing by the way he reacts. It could be a head movement, it could be the way the coat comes up on his back, tail movement, the way he pulls in on the lead.
“The longer you’re in with a dog, the more you actually get out of your dog in terms of readability.”
The pride of handlers in their dogs is evident in the way they speak about them and their successes. At their Thebarton base, they display prominently a special honour roll on which is inscribed the name of every dog and handler who has worked with the unit since its 1973 beginnings.
The dogs are hugely popular with the public and in great demand at special events such as Police Expo.
Conroy describes taking part in a dynamic demonstration at the grounds of the grand finals two years ago before a crowd of of more than 30,000.
“The ‘crooks’ stole the premiership cup,” recalls Conroy with a grin. “You had shotguns going and the STAR Group. Two of our dogs came out of a helicopter. It was pretty full-on. It was pretty exciting.
“And that’s what the crowd love. They love it. They think it’s great to see a dog. I think it’s the adrenaline element of a dog running and hitting a crook - because they run at over 55 or 60 kilometres an hour, these dogs, when they hit the arm - so they’re moving.”
Conroy’s previous police dog was the legendary Mason - recently retired - who in his career helped apprehend hundreds of criminals as well as recover lost property and drugs. Winner of numerous awards, Mason has even starred in his own film - an SA police promotional video on the work of police dogs.
The video shows him in a variety of roles, ranging from high-risk police work to visiting an infants’ school and mixing affably with children.
This stable temperament displayed by Mason is what police handlers always look for when they recruit new dogs.
This is a point Hunter particularly tries to get across to the public.
“The dogs are not these mean, hitting, bloody raving lunatics,” he says, “because here he is with the kids. It’s the same bloody dog!”
The Dog Operations Unit is painstakingly careful that its dogs are used responsibly.
“The dog is an extension of the handler,” says Conroy. “And, as such, we’ve got to be responsible in the use of the dog, and we’re governed by certain guidelines, departmentally.”
The unit likes, where possible, to use the minimum of force in apprehending offenders.
Wight says: “Before releasing the dog in most searching exercises, we issue a challenge, which is basically: ‘Police here with dog. Come out now, or we’re going to release the dog’.”
Sometimes the police handler does not even need to issue a challenge. On hearing an approaching dog, offenders are often all too willing to surrender.
“I’ve had that happen several times,” says Nairn. “They hear the dog – because we’re not exactly quiet with the dog. He’s panting very loudly, he’s pulling very strongly on the lead – with the handler trying to keep up. And they can hear him coming. A lot of them just scream.”
Only as a last resort, when an offender ignores the police challenge and tries to flee, is the dog released from its lead to chase and detain him.
But even then, according to Conroy, dogs “don’t sort of bite the crook all over or anything. (He) usually grabs or holds onto him until we arrive, and then the dog’s removed straight away.”
Hunter says that the dogs are always trained to apprehend the offender by the sleeve.
“And we very rarely have an accident,” he says. “I mean the dog is focussed.”
“We used to get complaints all the time about dog bites,” he recalls. “The Police Complaints Authority came down and had a look at what we did, and they were quite satisfied with it, and I can’t remember the last time when there’s been a complaint.”
German Shepherds are used not only in dramatic and high-risk criminal work, but in a variety of other low-key, but valuable tasks, such as leading police to graffiti artists or helping to find missing persons.
A number of years ago an old lady wandered away from her Old Noarlunga nursing-home and no-one could find her. Eight hours after her disappearance, the police dogs were called in. They found her alive, sitting in some bushes, with snails crawling all over her.
Hunter recalls: “The doctor said afterwards that if the dog hadn’t found her, she would have died.”
Police dogs have proven their worth many times. But, as a dog’s operational life is only about five years, this means that - in the absence of replacements - the unit’s effectiveness can suffer.
The unit relies entirely on members of the public making donations of thoroughbred German Shepherds, ideally aged between 12 months and two years. And even then, only a few of the dogs offered will be selected.
The dogs that the unit looks for, says Hunter, are “the ones who have an outgoing character. They are happy and they want to retrieve, chase a ball or whatever.”
Conroy says: “If you’ve got a pet in your backyard, he could turn out to be a successful police dog one day. We always are asking people to supply further dogs because they’re our only source. Without them, we’re not to be.”
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