How Police Dogs Work

in general. To be these service talks are guide dogs. I don't remember. Remember that was a great, great one. I always left talking about dogs. In fact, we should just do one on dogs. Very interesting. I can't believe we haven't. Yeah, it's pretty pretty fascinating, the history and the breeds and how that all works, and so yeah, this is about specific dogs more often than not, German shepherds and Belgian malwaws. Don't forget about the beagle brigade.

Oh yeah, there's so cute, the cutest little service brigade on the planet. Love little beagles until they start howling, But other than that they're very cute. That's right, do they howl more than most dogs. Beagles. No, but when they do, they can howl. Okay, they're like a hound. They remember the hounds. Yeah, my too. Um how at the sirens they go by? Yeah, because it's like and howling machine to the I love it though. I think it's great, gotcha because it's over before you know it,

and it's I just like it. You have a beagle, do you know? But they how Yeah? Most dogs how huh, it's not like a beagle trade. I thought it was beagles and hounds and bassa hounds blood. I grew up with basset hounds. It's pretty great at your house. Yeah, that was boh, he was awesome. He used to trip on his ears. He's step on them, those poor dogs. Yeah, that's back when I knew better and got like, you know, I want this breed of a dog. Let's go buy

one now. You know you rescue the much from the kennel. That's how you should get a dog. All right, I'm off my soapbox. So, like I was saying, Malonois, German shepherds, labs, police dogs and how and little um beagles mainly German shepherds though, Yeah, from what I've seen well, apparently the Belgian ones are pretty Um, I'm pretty sure I'm saying it right. Malon Wis, Well, that's where it all started

in Belgium. Yeah, let's start with the history of police dogs, man, because while they are pretty ubiquitous here in the United States these days you always see like a car that says like canine unit or whatever. Um. They like to release the dogs a lot these days on protests, which is pretty disheartening. Um, it's actually fairly recent, at least in the United States. Europe has been doing this fred

at all time. Yeah. The first recorded police dogs were in France uh in the fourteenth century that guarded duck installations, and then UH in eight London the London Metropolitan Police Force first to use bloodhounds to work the Jack the Ripper case. Really, man, A lot of stuff came out of that case. Yeah, A lot of things like forensics that we're using today still and shouldn't be came out of that case. And they still couldn't catch them. No, never figured it out. Did you ever see that? Um? Oh,

what was the guy from Night Rider's name? I can't with the half what's his full name? Yeah, David Hassle he goes by the though. Yeah, um, he did it one where the Tower Bridge or the London Bridge was um re built in at like um in Arizona. What's that famous lake in Arizona, the resort like habits. Yes, they rebuilt the London Bridge at Lake have a sou and Jack the Rippers ghost came with it and started killing everybody like a TV movie. I think it was

made for TV. It certainly has the production value made for TV movie. And Hasselhoff is the police detective with the bad attitude who's the only guy with the chops to solve this case, and everybody thinks he's crazy because he's like, it's Jack the Ripper's ghost. It was. I saw it when I was a kid, and I think it's on like Amazon Prime, so it's coming for free. I don't remember what it's called, but it's on there. Man, I gotta seek that one out. Uh. That's crazy. And

that was back in his night Rider hey day. I guess yeah, he was clearly righting high pre Baywatch even I guess yeah, Oh, I forgot he was on Baywatch. Wasn't name I mean that's oh, he made his name all over the place on stage screen. Yeah, now he's just uh so Belgium in Ghent g h e n T, Belgium. Um, they first started using about ten years later than London in eighteen ninety nine, and they actually had a program set up, Yeah, like the first real police dog program

and it was a big success. Uh. And in October of nineteen o seven, New York Police Department Chief I guess George Wakefield went to Gahant in Belgium and came back with five dogs. They just followed him home. Started using them in New York City in nineteen eight Yeah, and then uh, New Jersey followed suit very quickly, and so did Detroit. The thing is, all of these um police canine units were disbanded within a few years because they didn't know how to train the dogs properly. Yeah.

I think the thing I saw said, from nineteen fifty one to nineteen fifty four there were no police dogs in the United States, and then later in the nineteen fifties they started coming back. In the nineteen seventies they became really widespread as far as many municipalities having a canine unit. Yeah. Um. And initially it was like, oh, I need a police dog. You have a German shepherd and uh, leave it to me in your will. That

was like a police dog arrangement for a while. And finally, law enforcement agencies around the country Apparently two thousand one set off a huge boom in demand for police dogs. That's one of the big reasons why they're so ubiquitous today, although they've been in use a lot longer than that. Um, but in any small town now you're gonna find like

at least one canine unit post nine eleven. Right, So, but at some point they figured out the ones that they're doing in Europe, let's just import them from there because they know what they're doing in Belgium and Holland and in other areas where they have these long standing police training programs where you can buy a certified dog and then you act teach the trainer how to how to deal with that dog, rather than the trainer training the dog, because the dog already comes trained and ready

to go. Well, there's still a lot more training you have to do once you get them over here. But um, from what I read, it's like bucks to buy the certified dog and then another tin grand to train them. In the United States, Yeah, but they pay for themselves. Well, they do because they're usually paid for with drug money that has been seized sometimes by um by drugs that have been sniffed out by police dogs. So the police

dogs are generating income to bio police dogs. Among other things yea, and fat doghouses and great treats like the frozen ice cream treats that dogs love so much. I bet canines get those. Why do they use dogs? One good reason is because their sense of smell is about fifty times more sensitive than the humans, which that you don't need any more reason than that, Right, they can smell.

They I think this is the grabster wrote this one, right. Uh. He actually interviewed a canine team, the human part of that team and New York and he said that his dog Breaston found a shipment of marijuana and heat sealed milar bags inside plastic line crates sealed with foam silent inside a closed storage garage with a cold Yeah, half asleep. So that's that's a little bit. Uh, that'll tell you a little bit about the sensitivity of a dog's nose.

It's pretty amazing. They don't get confused. You can you can bury your drugs and coffee or wrap them and perfume and the dog will still go no, no, I know it's in there. Let's try now, let me bite your crotch. And the reason they are they knows as oars since was they had something like um, like old three receptors where we have something like five million. Yeah, we're dummies in the smell department. So um. Dogs are also used not just for sniffing stuff out, whether it

be drugs or bombs or whatever. They're also used as patrol dogs UM, which basically means that they're attack dogs at the ready. UM. And apparently just the very presence of a dog can keep a physical confrontation from taking place or escalating. Oh yeah, I've seen it on cops. When they get that dog out, you most often see the dude go okay, I'll get where do you want me? Because they've got that dog barking and they don't. I don't know. It's weird that being beaten down by a

human isn't enough, but let dog is is scary. You know, Well, you can't really reason with the dog. It can't be like enough. Yeah what am I saying? I don't know if you can reason with the CoP's keating me down there. So with the um with the dog, actually they fall into this um spectrum of escalation of violence that's allowable among law enforcement and actually come after the baton, but before the cop draws this gun. Right, So baton doesn't work,

you can release the dog. The dog doesn't work, you can pull your gun, and then if that doesn't work, you can pull the trigger. That's the continuum of violence, continuum of force. I'm sorry, big difference. Let's just call it violence. Um, they're not lulla buying people to sleep and putting them in the police car, you know what I mean? Uh, Like we said, it's usually German shepherds. Um. Sometimes they use labs now labrador retrievers. Uh what is

that called again? You said it once before, the Belgian malonois melonoi and of course the beagles would we'll talk about here in a bit. They're all well suited to police doggery work and they can uh get them all over the place. Like you said, sometimes they're donated. But by and large, if you want a really cracked police dog, you still need to go to Europe. It's where it's worth the money. Yeah, apparently because if there are issues later on in court, about the dog. Apparently the first

thing defense attorneys will say is your pay post please? Yeah, and like they want to see this dog's background. As far as the Supreme Court's concerned, which we'll talk about later,

is of two thirteen. That's all they need to say. Uh. And the reason they get these dogs from europe um is because their standards are just way more strict and they, like you said, basically like let's just take this dog and train them like this dog has been bred from this lineage, right, I don't like that that light patch on that dog's ear. Kill it. Don't say that, well, they don't breed it, yes, kill it's genetic line right. As far as Richard Dawkins is concerned, they might as

well be saying kill it, neuter it. Well, and that's a big thing. As they leave these mail dogs they're usually male dogs, and gave them unneutered because that will keep that aggressive streak intact um, which took them to the cop. It's sort of the same thing. You want the best of the best, right right, Yeah, I mean ideally, yes, this is all like in ideals and and hypotheticals, it's all. It all makes utter sense. And I think that's how it works out most of the time. Yeah, they there's

not any cop can go be a canine cop. It's you required. You're required to be at the very top of your class, very strong, energetic personality, very outgoing, willing to work very long hours. It turns out I did not realize this. Yeah, well, well we'll talk about in a minute. But they say sixty hours a week and they and that's just working. The dog lives with you. It's your dog, seven dude. Yeah, so they have such a tight bond. You were that dog's handler for its

whole career. Yeah, and I think the time these cops keep these dogs after they're retired as well, Oh, I would guess. So, yeah, it'd be hard to be like, all right, go live with someone else. Good luck in your retirement. Al Right, let's take a break here and we'll talk a little bit about dog basic training right after this. So, Chuck, the first thing that I'll police

dogs go through is obedience training. Kind of basic and simple, but it's also probably the most important training they go through, especially when they're patrol dogs, because they have to listen to their handler or else things can go um really bad, really fast. Because their handler is going to tell them when enough is enough. Uh and if the dog isn't understanding this and doesn't have that basic obedience, then you can get in big trouble. Yes, as a as a

police force and as a canine unit. Lawsuits arrest. Well, I'll probably not arrest um Ed points to dog. Can't you end? Point? Now you can't? Um? Well, I guess you can. In a way the dog catcher arrests dogs. Um I thought that was an apt analogy. Uh so Ed points out or Ed dispels a myth here actually where um I guess a lot of the dogs that come over from Europe take commands in their native language, right,

which makes total sense. But apparently there is a myth that the reason why is because they don't want people. Besides the handler acts ofly or purposefully setting the dog off to attack by saying the word not true. No, Apparently, it's just it's easier for the dog to retain the training it had and for the handler to just learn a few words in a foreign language. Yea, it makes

total sense. You're not gonna get a German shepherd that's fully trained and say all right, now, forget all that because I want to say sit and not zitsen zits in is um sit in German plots, plots has laid down. My friend Clay has a German shepherd he bought from Germany, and uh he gives commands in German, which is pretty interesting. Yeah, you hear a lot of plots around his dog. I grew up with German shepherds. A couple of them. Plots is more efficient because it's one syllable and lay down

as two. Yea makes sense. Germans efficient. Uh what else they can get into specialty training? They need to be uh, well, they need to have endurance and be super agile and be you know, physically fit dogs. But then they go through specialty training like whether it's drugs or bombs. Um. I know arson is a big one now to have them seek out accelerants. They can even track people, um, which I didn't quite get and getting how they do it, but I don't understand how they actually do it well.

When I've seen it on cops, it's been like they have a piece of clothing from a guy and then there's like he's in this attic in this house somewhere to find him, so they have to have something to to scent the dog. Yeah, I think, so, Okay, that's I did. That's what I didn't get. I mean, like, if it's just some guy who ran, then the dog wouldn't really be of any use right now, Like just

a description of the purp wouldn't help. So um. This training, actually, the secondary training or specialty training, is actually really simple and kind of clever and fun. It is so the first thing the dog learns to do is to love

a towel more than anything else on the planet. It's it becomes its toy, a towel that's been washed to remove any kind of scent, so the towel doesn't have its own scent, and the dog learns to love it by playing tug of war with it, right, And then in very short order, the cop gets his hands on a little bagging of pot and rolls it up with the towel and they keep playing tug of war, and now the dogs like, hey, my favorite toy smells a

lot like pot. Okay, Now the next step is for the cop to hide the towel filled with pot, and the dog finds it, and then they play tug of war, and eventually the dog will learn that anytime it smells pot, it thinks it's toy is hiding, and it goes after and starts digging in the place where that it smells pot. And hence the dog has just sniffed out pot, which means that drug sniffing police dogs are playing, which I

didn't realize until pretty awesome. They think about when you see a dog clawing at the trunk of that guy's car, he's like, my toys in there, my toys in there. Uh. And then they will replace that pot with all manner of drugs to cross strain the dogs, so they can basically they'll stuff that suitcase that um that Hunter Thompson steels please conce into a towel. And yeah, they can also do like explosive components too sure for bombs and then accelerants in the case of arson. Arson sniffing dogs

are a big thing now. That's all the rage. They're so hot right now. And there's two ways that can alert. The aggressive alert is what we were just talking about, is when they think there's that toy and they're just clawing and pawing and trying to dig it out of your suitcase or wherever. And then there's the passive alert, and that is when you don't want a dog clawing all up in your junk and you need a little

more delicate situation, which is the case with the Beagle Brigade. Yeah, they just come and they sit next to the person. That's how they alert. That's the cutest alert alert. Yeah, And that's the kind of cut their toward the person. The Beagle Brigade works with the U. S d A and they sniff out illegal produce. So you might have seen them at the airport here and they were like little um best. Yeah, but not bulletproof fests, but like patrol dogs to you. In fact, they have I think

ed mentioned a fundraiser. They had to get bulletproof fest for the dogs at this one, and they like people just flooded them with money, right, you know, because it's not cheap. No, I have I have no idea how much bulletproof vest is for Kena and unite do you you just know the one that you have? How much that cost? No? I don't know. My guess is a bulletproof fest is probably a couple of grand Okay, I'm

just throwing that out there. That's what i'd pay, That's what you pay, well, my friend, you would be taken for a ride because I a canine tactical mole vest for a hundred. That's a dubious and apparently Miami Heat star Ray Allen has a side business where he supplies canine protection and safety products. And this is a segment called Josh reads his phone on the air. You've done that before. Don't even play holier than now. Yeah, you're looking at the name of the impossible the other day

while I was yapping. That's like the only time I've ever done that. So, uh, let's talk about a day in the life of a dog, a canine dog. I didn't know this before. They even go on patrol from four pm to midnight. They're gonna be going to high schools and going down the hallways sniffing ackers. They're gonna be sniffing businesses. If you need a business sniff, you can call them and say, hey, I'd like to pay. I guess you can pay, right, you just requested. I

guess the request. The cops are like, it's an investment in a bust, right, good point. Uh, some days you have to go to court and then the dog has to go to court as well. And then eventually they will actually work their shift. And this is why they worked such long hours because they're busy during the day and then they go to work at night when they need to be banging the streets and you're so tough, but uh. And when they're on the streets, what they're

doing is um just like any other cop. Basically, you know, you do a lot of sitting around and waiting on calls to come in. Then when that call comes in, you might be sniffing out a car. You might be chasing a purpose. Yeah, you could be doing both. Yeah, the dog that is um and when you are snoop in a car if you're a dog. The Supreme Court ruled that a dog alert is enough for probable cause for a police search like that in and of itself. So if the dog alerts it's trainer, who is or handler?

I should say, who's the only person on that scene who can read the dog's behavior necessarily um that then that officer has a um a right to search that car. Yeah, And that's very delicate matter because there's a lot of claims of false signals that a cop will make the dog react just so they can Basically that the canine dog is a prop used to get search whenever they want. Yes, and those some people say that those are um, well, yeah,

and I guess we'll talk about it later. The false positives, yeah, well, that'll be quiet for now. We can talk about no. Well, false false positives are the thing that you, um are most concerned with with police dogs because they usually do not miss drugs the presence of drugs when they are present. Police dog, when it's brought around to like a car or something like that, it knows the score. It knows that it's supposed to be looking for its toy, so

it's gonna start sniffing around. Um. The thing is is thinking about sniffing its toy. We're sniffing for its toy, and that's this whole thing. It's entirely possible that it's going to detect the presence of its toy, meaning drugs are there when it's not there, um, and then it'll give it an alert and then a full search will begin, which is not a problem when that actually results in

the the the discovery of drugs. But that apparently happens generously speaking, only um like forty six percent of the time they find drugs when a police dog says there's drugs there, which means like fifty percent of the time the police dog is saying that there's drugs there when there aren't, which means a lot of people innocent, A

lot of innocent people get their their property searched. Yeah, and there's a Chapel Hill, North Carolina law professor named Richard Meyers who in two thousand and six wrote an article on the George Mason Law Review where he basically said the controlled testing to get UH numbers on these dogs is terrible. Um. And he he did some math based on something called the Bayesian probability formula where he said he thinks it could be as high as eighty

five percent failure rate or false positive rate. Yeah, supposedly there was UM in Florida. There were some dogs that were being used on a stretch of highway where they put up roadblocks a lot that were like wrongent of the time in the eighties or something like that. Yeah, And I think they said one of the big issues is when they're doing that like random, not like pulled

someone over. But hey, I'm at the border and there's three cars in this line, sniff them all, right, Because the The idea is that most of those cars are going to be free of drugs, but the dogs like looking for drugs. This whole thing is it's looking for its toy, and the context is different for the dog than the average person who's just trying to get through the border. You know, it's very slippery slope, it is. And then it gets even more slippery when people when

juries convict based on evidence from dogs. So, for example, there was a guy named I think his name is Paul Yell who was convicted of intentionally burning down his own house, killing one of his kids inside because a police dog um detected accelerants. Well, the lab went behind the dog where the dog said there's an accelerant here and tested the area and in zero of those six did it find the presence of accelerants. The jury is still convicted of because the dog said that the guy

had used accelerance, even though the lab couldn't verify those results. Um. And there was another guy in a state trooper in Florida in the eighties named John Preston who had a dog named harrass too, And it turned out this guy helped put away like more than a hundred people and it was basically like a framer for hire. You could bring him along and basically let him know what you're looking for, and he would say that his dog had

had found whatever evidence you needed. And at least two people were exonerated of murder um who were convicted in part by evidence detected by this dog. Harrass too who was handled by Preston. And there's two really good documentaries. One is um a killing in Canova Beach. Remember when Paulson was on our episode or podcast for the Innocence Project. It's a documentary about that. And then there's another one called An Innocent Man. It's about a guy named Michael Morton.

Both of them feature this guy, John Prestons is notorious, infamous dog handler. Even among dog handlers. He's despised because he gave the idea of of um canine units. It's just a really bad name because everybody's like, well, if this guy is doing it, how many other people are doing it? Right? And then all of a sudden, you can't use canines anymore? All right, Well, we'll take one more break and come back and talk some about Uh, well, what are we gonna talk about? Let's talk about dogs,

all right? So here's a little stat for you. UM, on a drug sweep a canine, they're very efficient a canine unit. The dog can cover ten times as much, uh ten times quicker to search an area than a human cop goold, and be way more apt to find

the drugs than a cop might. Which again, it makes sense because if if you can't disguise a shipment of drugs very well from a dog's nose, then you're in trouble first of all, but also most people are trying to disguise it from humans, which means you're trying to make it so it doesn't look like drugs. But even if you go to the trouble of disguising the scent, it's still probably not gonna work for a well trained dog.

Police dogs are considered they're kind of treated like regular cops as far as protections and the law goes like, if you shoot and kill a police dog, they treat it as if you had shot and killed a police officer. Yeah, a guy in Pittsburgh recently got three and a half to seven years for stabbing a police dog to death. Um, so I guess it's not just like it because if you kill the cop, you'd probably go to the chair, right,

you wouldn't get three to seven years. UM. In Tennessee, they recently passed the law called Erin's Law in honor of a police dog that's mentioned in here that went down and during a bank robbery. He was killed the bank he kept he kept going after the bank robber that was shooting at him. Uh. And apparently he's credited for distracting the robber enough for the human cops to get the safety and eventually they the swat team killed the bank robber, but the dog was killed in the process.

But that was and it wasn't until this year two thousand fifteen that Tennessee passed a law called Aaron's Law that makes it a felony to kill a police dog. And and intentionally kill a police dog. I'm surprised it's just not a felony everywhere. Yeah, it is kind of surprising. Uh. And then in terms of being treated like regular cops as far as the use of force, the justification is

the same with the dog. Uh. And they said, and it says in this article that in court typically use of force is justified if the suspect is armed, if they have not yet been searched by officers, or if they are fleeing a serious crime scene, that's when you

can release the hounds. Yeah, and so, like we said, usually just the the certificates of training are enough for a court to be like, Okay, it's fine that that dog probably didn't overstep its bounds, despite what the guy who's now suing the police department because he got bit by this police dog is saying. Because he's a he's a trained dog, trained European police dog, um, and the

track record doesn't have to come into account. It's just that's enough for most courts to say, Nope, excessive force was not used. Yeah. I think we're going to see a lot more stuff about this in the future. False triggers and well rulings. Forensic forensic investigation as a whole is under a microscope like now her before and and very appropriately. There's a lot of stuff that's still just based on hunches that's being passed off as science and

courtrooms and people are being convicted on. Even DNA can can be very easily misused when it's not done properly. Yeah, so I think it should be agreed, So, Chuck, there is a very famous police dog that you may have heard of. Rentintin, that's right, was a German dog who fought who fought for the Kaiser in World War One. But then the guys who were UM, the unit he was a member of, abandoned him. So an Americans said, hey, boot, come over here, and Rentintin followed him and ended up

becoming a movie star in the United States. About that, did you know that? I did not know that. I mean I knew about Rentintin, but I had no idea that he was a service dog. Yeah, pretty neat. So there are actually, um, there's a group called the Connecticut Police Work Dog Association and they are involved in honoring and tracking UM police dogs who have died in the

line of duty. And a surprising and very disturbing number of police dogs die in the line of duty because they're left in hot cars and forgotten about what in Uh. Since nineteen forty two thousand dogs police dogs have died in the line of duty. Um, and then since two thousand seven, twenty nine have died from being left in sweltering cars. Cow. Yeah. And the reason why is because there are um special compartments for them to ride in. Ye. Yeah,

that aren't necessarily air conditioned. Yeah, they need to outfit those since then, yeah, that's that should not happen. It's two thousand seven. That shouldn't happen once because it's easily preventable. It surious. You got anything else? I got nothing else, and this one was chuck full of stacks sets, random lots of stuff. I was surprised when I first saw police dogs. I was like, okay, and it was very much more complex and interesting issue than I initially assumed

it would be. If you see a police dog, do you not go up and pet it? Um? It's working, especially if you have drugs on your person. That's right. Uh. If you want to know more about police dogs, you can type those words into the search bar at house to works dot com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mayo, I'm gonna call this meat pigeon. Hey, guys, have been hooked on your podcast since the first episode I listened to. I've been hooked on meat pigeons even long.

I never thought I'd have anything worth writing in about, but when I saw two day's episode about pigeons, seemed too coincidental not to This past weekend, I received a random text from my boss asking if I wanted a pigeon. It's not as odd as you would think, because I work in a pet store not known for being an animal lover, animal loving vegan with an affinity for birds. As it turns out in sumter, South Carolina, wear my boss that's as a pigeon processing plant where they raise

utility pigeons for meat and research. My boss were easily caught a lucky escape ee as he bathed in the sprinkler, unaware that he's being stalked by a resident cat. So after a few days of rooming with William the dub I took home when it was abandoned at my work. The pigeon now as a coop to call his own, replacing his temporary name of meat. Pigeon is a proper name, Ramsey's.

I guess William was thin her boss. I'm a little confused. Yeah, the introduction of the name Ramsey's makes me think you're probably right, unless her boss's name Ramsey's. No, no, No. The pigeons the namy gave himself when he became manager. It's a tribute to Ramsey's, the third in pigeon history, but has consequently led to my husband and I frequently singing Nacho libra quotes too poor Ramsey's. I don't remember Ramsey's and Nacho libre, do you. I didn't see that.

They didn't know it's cute. The next step is to seek out some pigeon companionship for Ramsey's. Thank you so much for the greatest podcast ever. I'm hoping there will be a southeast toward you will past to Columbia, South Carolina. Maybe you might just have to drive to Atlanta. Let's not do it. And that is from bree Uh Bagnal in Columbia and she sending pictures of Ramsey's in the coop. He is one cute pigeon. Yeah there are Yeah, he's cute. There are some cute pigeons out there. I learned, as

long as they're not carrier pigeons usually fairly cute. That wattle. Uh. If you want to get in touch with us and tell us your amazing story about whatever, you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stup you should know. You can send us an email to Stuff podcast that how Stuff works dot com and has always joined us at our home on the web. Stuff you should know dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics because how stuff works dot com. Hm hm