THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 9, 1994 TAG: 9410070273
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Random Rambles
SOURCE: Tony Stein
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines
If Rick Ward and Tim Breslin ever got lost in Holland, they might have a problem. They speak only enough Dutch to talk to dogs. You may even visualize them saying, ``Hey there, kindly stranger, take me to your puppy biscuit.''
Don't. The Dutch that Ward and Breslin speak has nothing to do with tourist talk. Their Dutch is a set of commands that keeps their K-9 partners busy finding drugs, catching criminals and generally making Chesapeake safer for its two-legged and four-legged citizens.
Chesapeake has had a K-9 program for about a year and a half now, and it's going very well, thank you. There are eight teams, officers and dogs, in the program. Dutch is involved because the dogs are a breed called the Belgian Malinois and they come from Holland.
Breslin, supervisor of the K-9 unit, told me one of the Dutch commands the dogs respond to, but you won't see it here. ``The commands are a trade secret,'' Ward said. They have to be, or you'd have every Tom, Dick and felon yelling stuff to confuse the police pooches.
In any language, the dogs help Chesapeake cops do their job. Ward, who has just been named the department's officer of the quarter, told about the time he got a report that two juveniles on bikes were robbing people in South Norfolk. Patrolling with his dog, Carlo, Ward spotted the pair. One ran, but the other gave up because Ward threatened to turn Carlo loose on him. ``I have no doubt that he would have run, too, if it hadn't been for Carlo,'' Ward said.
The kid made a good choice to surrender. If you have a legal disagreement with Carlo and the other K-9 dogs, you do not want to mess with them. Ward puts it politely but clearly when he says, ``They are not trained to attack; they are trained to apprehend.'' However, the action suited to the word still can mean a sturdy set of teeth clamped on a bad guy's arm. Very persuasive.
When the dogs need to be tough, they're tough. Off duty, at home with their partners, they can be mush buckets. Ward says Carlo keeps his canine cool even when Brandon, Ward's 3-year-old son, gives his tail a tug.
Breslin's dog is Roxie, and she loves a little mild rough-and-tumble with the Breslins' 1-year-old son, Timmy. Both officers describe their dogs as playful. My dog book describes the breed as ``strong-muscled, alert, agile and full of life.''
What the book doesn't mention is that the Malinois is a first-class sniffer. You have heard the phrase ``long arm of the law.'' Meet the short nose of the law. The Chesapeake dogs are trained to sniff for drugs as well as do patrol work, and Carlo has a blue-ribbon record.
For instance, the law says a police officer can't search a car unless the owner gives permission or the officer has what the courts call ``probable cause.'' Ward told me about four cases where the driver said no to officers who suspected the cars contained drugs. Carlo was called in. He sniffed the cars from the outside. He scratched the cars at specific places. That's his way of saying, ``Aha! What have we here?''
Because Carlo is trained to sniff for drugs, his scratching gave the officers probable cause. Probable paws, actually. They searched the cars and found drugs. Then there was the cold and snowy night that Carlo picked up a scent and tracked a suspect for a mile and a half before he was nabbed.
Besides Breslin and Ward and their dogs, the K-9 unit members are Don Moorman and Rudy, Mike Bedard and Bart, Steve Bryan and Robby, Darryl Jackson and Tessa, Ken McLendon and Tanya and Elliot Boyd and another Tessa. Breslin doesn't know how come two dogs are named Tessa because the names are given before the department gets the dogs. No problem, though. Jackson's dog is Tessa 1 and Boyd's dog is Tessa 2.
The officers have all gone through a training period with the dogs so they can become a working team, training that includes getting the dogs accustomed to the sound of gunfire. They start with blanks, Breslin says, and work up to large-caliber weapons.
The training goes on every week at the police academy in southern Chesapeake. The officers put the dogs through drills that simulate actual working situations. They might, for example, hide drugs so that the dogs can practice sniffing them out. Or they might have a man hide so the dogs can track him.
Men at work, dogs at play, Breslin and Ward say. The dogs thoroughly enjoy what they consider a game. I've seen that attitude. I once wrote about being tracked by a bloodhound, and when the dog went back to its kennel, he seemed to be basking in the other dogs' approval. They looked like nothing so much as baseball players high-fiving the slugger who hit a home run.
Good cops and smart pooches, these Malinois of the Chesapeake K-9s. Smart indeed. Like the time one of them got loose at Chesapeake City Park and couldn't be found. When the officers got back to the Greenbrier precinct, he was waiting for them there. And you just knew what he was thinking: ``Hey, guys. I wasn't lost. You were.'' by CNB