SUPPORTERS TOUT USE OF POLICE DOGS

WARNER ROBINS - Warner Robins police officer Scott Hydrick, alone late
one night in a Warner Robins apartment complex parking lot, found
himself standing before a dozen men he suspected were up to no good.
But he wasn't in trouble.

With a touch of a remote-control button on his belt, Hydrick's
partner, a police dog named Gunner, was released from the police car
and ran to his side.

And what could have turned into a bad situation for a lone officer on
patrol instead turned into a routine drug bust and the seizure of loaded gun.

"If he hadn't been there, it could have been a different story," said
Hydrick, an 18-year police dog handler. "A police dog commands respect."

Gunner, a Belgian Malinois, is Hydrick's seventh four-legged
partner.

Most agencies say police dogs provide a valuable crime-fighting tool.
But others aren't convinced that the dogs can earn their keep.

Tech. Sgt. Michael Socey, kennel master for the 78th Security Forces
at Robins Air Force Base, said the primary asset of a police dog is
its presence in volatile situations.

"The presence of a dog immediately de-escalates a situation," Socey
said. He said one security officer and a dog can handle a situation
that might take three or four security officers to command.

The six police dogs, either Belgian Malinois or German shepherds, and
the handlers under his command at Robins are deployed all over the
world, Socey said.

The dogs use their bomb and explosive sniffing skills and security
training for a variety of tasks from protecting forces overseas in
Iraq to guarding foreign dignitaries visiting the United States, Socey
said.

Houston County sheriff's police dog, Bandit, a German shepherd,
specializes in drug detection, having sniffed out more than $500,000
in drug money this year, said his handler, Cpl. Eric Barnett. Bandit,
Barnett and Sgt. Chad Payne make up the sheriff's special drug
enforcement team that patrols Interstate 75.

Most recently, Bandit sniffed out $17,000 hidden in a car's wheel
compartment. And earlier this year, the dog detected a pound of
methamphetamine bundled inside a waterproof container hidden in a
car's gas tank, Barnett said.

"If you walk into McDonald's, you smell fries and hamburgers. But dogs
also smell the mustard, the pickle, the lettuce, tomato," Barnett
said. "Their sense of smell is 10,000-times keener than ours and they
are able to departmentalize and isolate the smells."

While Warner Robins may not draw the type of revenues that the
sheriff's office does running patrol on interstate drug trafficking,
the city's three dogs - soon to be four - serve a variety of functions.

Arno, a bomb-sniffing dog, was credited with finding a bullet at the
crime scene of the 2003 murder of Tamarcus LaKeith Jordan. A bullet
had gone through the gypsum wallboard in the living room of Jordan's
home and crime scene investigators could not locate it. But Arno
sniffed out the bullet, which had come to rest behind some wallboard.
Officers were able to cut through and recover the bullet, Hydrick
said. Three men - Tellis Lamar Clark, Kenny Leshon Jackson, both of
Warner Robins, and Cesar Geronimo Sessions of Gainesville - are
serving life sentences in prison for Jordan's murder. The bullet was a
valuable piece of crime scene evidence, Hydrick said.

The city's police dogs have also been used to track an Alzheimer's
patient who wandered away from her home and to recover stolen goods in
series of car break-ins, said Warner Robins police Sgt. Bryan Stewart,
who supervises the city's police dog force. The goods were stashed in
some bushes where the thief had probably hoped to return had the dog
not found the stolen times first, Stewart said.

But not everyone is sold on police dogs. While many law enforcement
agencies use the dogs, others do not, including the Bibb County
Sheriff's Office.

Lt. David Davis, spokesman for the Bibb County Sheriff's Office, said
the chief reason police dogs aren't used is a desire to multitask
sheriff's deputies.

Dogs and their handlers are more of a speciality tool, Davis said, and
can't always respond to what a regular sheriff's deputy could.

For example, in a traffic accident, police dog handlers could not
respond because they cannot leave their dog on the side of the road
while investigating the accident, Davis said. "It's just a matter of
resources and the best use of those resources," he said.

For the Crawford County Sheriff's Office, police dogs are a luxury,
Sheriff Kerry Dunaway said. After the last dog retired, the department
disbanded its canine unit. Police dogs are wonderful law enforcement
tools, but when budgets get tight that's often an area that can get
cut, Dunaway said.

A police dog costs between $3,000 and $5,000 - depending on the breed,
level of training and type of specialty. Specialties range from
narcotics to patrol to explosives to tracking. Annual costs include
veterinary care, food and shelter.

But some law enforcement agencies get help to offset the
expense.

"They are extremely economical for us," said Allison Grant,
spokeswoman for the Monroe County Sheriff's Office. The sheriff's
office has two drug-sniffing black Labrador retrievers.

"A local vet provides medical services for them and also donates food
to us. So our handlers or the sheriff's office don't have to pocket
those expenses," Grant said.

At the Dublin Police Department, Chief Wayne Cain will soon have a
police dog on the force - a 3-month-old bloodhound named Kane who was
a gift to the department from a Jeffersonville woman.

Not only will the dog be of service as a tracking dog, he'll also be a
good public relations tool for the police department, Cain said. He
expects Kane will be a hit with area school children.

"Bad guys don't like police dogs, but the kids sure do," Cain said.