SNIFFING OUT CRIME

Police Dogs Invaluable Addition To The Force

CONST. Scott Taylor and his police dog, Judge, were recently practising
their tracking skills in Transcona -- one can't do his job without the
other -- when a stolen Chevy Blazer full of youths drove past.

It was the middle of the night, and youths were suspected of breaking into
vehicles. Taylor and Judge decided to go to work.

"That's the beautiful part of this job," Taylor says, explaining his role
as a dog-handler on the 10-member Winnipeg Police Service canine unit.

"We have the luxury to hunt."

It took a few minutes for Taylor to get behind the suspects' vehicle and
follow them into North Kildonan.

Then he lost them. But he had radioed to other patrol cars on the road and
they had set up a plan to search out the stolen Blazer again. Soon, Taylor
spotted them, the Blazer driving slowly north on Henderson Highway. Police
learned later a 12-year-old boy was behind the wheel.

The Blazer turned onto the Chief Peguis Trail bridge, but up ahead another
patrol unit had put down a Stop Stick, a Styrofoam board embedded with
razor blade-like metal shards. The Blazer hit it and blew a tire.

It didn't stop. It kept on going south on Main Street. Police followed at a
safe distance until it came to the area around Magnus Avenue west of
McPhillips Street. That's when the four youths bolted on foot.

Taylor and Judge pulled up seconds later.

Judge knew almost instinctively what he was supposed to do -- use his nose
to follow their fear. Anyone on the run, pumping out adrenaline, gives off
a fear scent.

"You can hear their nose when it's to the ground," Taylor says. "They just
click into it. That's the game." And the stronger that smell, and the
fresher the ground disturbance, the better dogs like Judge, a two-year-old
Belgian Malinois, perform.

"We work as a team," Taylor says. "He works the track. It's my job to put
him on it."

On this night, Judge did his job to perfection. Police arrested a
12-year-old boy, a 16-year-old female, a 14-year-old male and a 24-year-old
male. They all face theft and break-in charges.

But Taylor and Judge didn't make the actual arrests. That's left up to
other officers. Taylor has enough work keeping a leashed Judge under control.

"The dog is charged up," Taylor says. "He's not your pet dog."

Judge is one of five dogs bred by the police service.

Canine unit Sgt. Cliff Samson says police have been breeding their own
Belgian Malinois since 2000. A good police dog costs about $6,000 before
its first training day. The price is so high because of demand; almost
every law-enforcement agency in North America is looking for dogs.

There are also two German shepherds -- one is set to retire at the end of
the summer -- and two Labrador retrievers. The two Labs are specialty dogs.
One is a drug dog and the other sniffs out explosives.

Police don't want to talk much about the drug dog. Not because he doesn't
do his job, but because he does it too well. The pooch has helped police
uncover more than 20 pounds of marijuana coming into the city and, in
another case, helped officers make the biggest cocaine seizure ever in
Winnipeg.

The service's Belgium Malinois specialize in tracking. They come by that
skill naturally, but it's reinforced by the canine unit's training regimen,
recognized as one of the best in this part of the world.

"Tracking is the bread and butter of our unit," Samson says. "We spend a
lot of our time looking for people trying to evade capture."

Samson says police dog-handlers from the northern United States now come to
Winnipeg to train their own dogs in scent tracking. One of these dogs
recently helped an officer track down a serial rapist-murderer.

In Winnipeg, the unit's dogs have tracked down and helped police catch two
murder suspects in the past two years. One of the suspects still had the
murder weapon tucked in his pants when he was arrested.

The unit also works a lot with RCMP. The Mounties have their own dogs, but
sometimes ask for the help of city police on special projects.

For instance, Taylor said, he and Judge flew up to Poplar River First
Nation recently to hunt down three suspects connected to a violent home
invasion in the community July 24.

In a short time the three suspects were in custody; one was arrested in a
house, one gave himself up and one turned himself in after trying to outrun
Judge. "Without the dog, these guys could have just barrelled into the bush
and we wouldn't have seen them," Taylor said.

Samson says the seven dogs on patrol each average about 30 arrests a year.