Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 25, 1993 TAG: 9304250172
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: FRONT ROYAL LENGTH: Medium
And he works cheap.
No. C-475 is better known as Sinbad, a handsome black Labrador mix and the star of his very own trading card. He's pictured in profile, pink tongue hanging out. His stats, printed on the back, include age, weight, total seizures and largest bust to date.
There's also an 800 number to call to report suspected drug smuggling.
"We're trying to educate kids before they get involved" with drugs, said Carl Newcombe, director of the Customs Service's special dog-training center in Front Royal.
"The cards draw children's attention to something they can relate to, dogs and card collecting," Newcombe said.
RJR Nabisco printed 24 "All-Star" cards last year and included them in boxes of Milk-Bone dog biscuits. Customs agents also hand out cards to schoolchildren as part of anti-drug appearances.
Nabisco isn't participating this year, but Customs will print its own set this summer at a cost of about $100,000, Newcombe said. "We think it's a very good investment."
Sinbad is assigned to the Customs office in San Ysidro, Calif., on the Mexican border. He once found 401 pounds of cocaine stashed in the walls of a pickup truck waiting to enter the United States.
Sinbad's reward for that feat? A romp with a rolled-up towel. That's what the up to 220 dogs schooled annually at the center always get.
"They find the drugs, they get the towel. All the time they're scratching, sniffing, working to find the drugs they're thinking, `towel, towel,' " Newcombe said.
Customs' drug-sniffing dogs go through 12 weeks of intensive drills, learning first to pick out the scent of marijuana, hashish and cocaine, and then learning to detect it in cars, airplanes, luggage and clothing.
Customs trains its own agents and dogs at the center and also provides training for other law enforcement agencies and foreign governments.
On a recent morning, a team from the Texas Department of Public Safety was working a dog named Waco, encouraging the Labrador as he flailed about inside a junked car. When Waco came up with the goods, one handler jumped into the air, whooping; and Waco got his towel.
Haley, an excitable golden retriever being trained for Customs, may be destined for an all-star trading card. She immediately zeroed in on a buried stash and began a fierce effort to dig it up, to the admiration of trainers.
Customs dog teams made 5,530 drug busts last year, finding drugs with a street value of $10.5 billion, Newcombe said.
For every $1 spent training and maintaining a dog, Customs recoups $445 in seizures, Newcombe said.
Still, drug interdiction efforts can't begin to keep up with the flood of drugs coming over U.S. borders. Nationally, Drug Enforcement Administration and Customs officials estimate they stop about 10 percent of drug imports.
Creative smugglers have dissolved drugs into orange juice and tomato paste or molded drugs to resemble statues and packing material. In a celebrated case last year, agents discovered plastic electrical fittings constructed partly out of melted cocaine. Dogs could not detect the drugs.
"It's all part of the cat-and-mouse game," said Kennington Wall, spokesman for the Drug Policy Foundation. "Every time the government comes up with a tactic, the dealers find a way to elude it."
A recent General Accounting Office study concluded that the money spent trying to stop shipments at the border could be put to better use elsewhere in the war on drugs.
"The dog is not a cure-all. It has limits and advantages," Newcombe said. "It can't detect what it can't smell."
by CNB