DRUG DOGS, HANDLERS TRAIN TO SNIFF OUT CRIME

NEWPORT -- A Good Police Dog Is Worth All The Money It Can Seize.

That message was emphasized Friday to more than a dozen law-enforcement
canine handlers who took part in this week's third annual Northeast Arkansas
Canine Training Seminar. The event was sponsored by Newport Special School
District resource officer Pat McGee and his canine partner Gwenny, a $5,000
Belgian Malinois trained to detect drugs.

The seminar served to certify a number of drug dogs and their human partners
with the National Narcotic Detector Dog Association, McGee said.

"We're doing 48 hours' training in four days," he told The Jonesboro Sun.
"We have officers from Florida, New Mexico, all over the state of Arkansas,
and Paraguay, South America training with their dogs."

The canines and their handlers attended refresher and advanced classes at
the Newport Schools campus. The seminars were taught by well-known
narcotics-dog trainer Peter R. Nunez of United States K-9 Academy and Police
Dog Training Center of Miami.

"This year, we were joined by the Arkansas State Police," said Nunez, a
23-year veteran of narcotics-dog training. "I'm very excited and encouraged
about that."

Arkansas State Police trooper and canine officer Creston Hutton, who has for
five years worked with his partner, a yellow Labrador retriever named Meg,
said the training was much different than any he had experienced. Despite
the many busts credited to Hutton and Meg -- the pair was responsible for
the discovery of 35 pounds of marijuana secreted in an automobile's gas tank
and since Jan. 1, two kilograms of cocaine, two pounds of methamphetamine,
and one pound of pot just last Friday, in addition to the nearly $750,000 in
potentially seizable cash -- the duo always can stand improvement, Hutton
noted.

"The techniques taught at other seminars are old military methods," he said.
"By learning the new, European techniques that (Nunez) teaches, we stay on
top of the game.

"The guys from New Mexico are seeing changes in the ways drugs are shipped,"
he added. "It's just a matter of time before we run into it. But we got a
heads-up by attending this seminar. Meg's doing a lot better just from
working these past couple of days. Hopefully, we'll find more drugs. It's
great, all the way around."

Dwayne Austin, 25, of Santa Rosa, N.M., regional canine trainer for
Wackenhut Corrections Corp., said this seminar was his fifth. Austin said he
was sent by Wackenhut to learn all he could, and apply the new methods to
his own dog-training regimen.

"This is phenomenal," he said. "Pete Nunez teaches handlers everything they
need to know. He knows what he's doing."

The participants also attended lectures and demonstrations conducted by Dr.
Ken Furton, professor of chemistry at Florida International University.

"We're doing work trying to look at the reliabilities of drug-detector
dogs," the professor said. "We're trying to improve their performance, find
out how it is they do what they do in terms of what chemicals they are using
to find items, what their threshold levels are and how reliable they are."

Furton said despite the hype that surrounds drug-detecting dogs, they can't
smell cocaine.

"They focus on contaminants in the drug, mainly methyl benzoate," he said.
"Nobody can really smell cocaine because it is an anesthetic."

The professor explained that scientific studies indicated trace amounts of
cocaine exist on nearly every piece of currency in the country, but that
because of the miniscule amounts -- approximately one-millionth of one gram
per bill -- the dogs were unable to detect the drug's presence.

That's good news for law enforcement and prosecutors, he said. Defense
attorneys for alleged drug dealers and organized cartels often claimed in
court proceedings that because drug dogs' olfactory senses are so acute,
many times their hits are skewed, Furton noted.

"It's not sensitivity that's important," he said. "It's selectivity.

"A dog's selectivity is much greater than that of a human," he continued.
"But, a dog alerting on currency is not enough for a person to lose their
money. However, it can be an important part of the probable cause equation
in cases that involve cash seized by authorities from alleged drug dealers."