Now most police dogs are trained to either detect narcotics or explosives. "The program started for all the wrong reasons in a lot of places," Hess said. Police dogs first gained widespread notoriety during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, when they were used to stem civil disobedience. Officers say they've worked hard to overcome the dubious reputation police dogs earned during their early days in law enforcement. "Departments used to get their dogs through donations." "We used to get them for nothing," said Hess, who has worked with police dogs during the bulk of his four decades in law enforcement. Trained dogs can sell for up to $10,000, depending on their level of training. With demand from police agencies in the United States and elsewhere in the world rising, the price of "green," or untrained, dogs is commonly about $5,000, said Russell Hess, the national director of the U. Most police dogs are German shepherds, Labradors and Belgian malinois. law enforcement agencies are imported from Belgium, Denmark and other European countries where high-quality dogs are bred. "Last year 12 arrests were directly attributed to him where there was no other probable cause." "He's been involved in many arrests," said Cpl. Gaithersburg, which like Rockville has its own police department, bought a narcotics dog 3 1/2 years ago. Fairfax County has also invested in more police dogs in recent years to enhance its ability to detect explosives and locate missing persons. The federal government was buying dogs as fast as they could."Ĭounty police last year expanded their unit from 13 to 20 officers, some of whom have more than one dog. "The market for dogs changed significantly. Jim Daly, one of the supervisors of the county's police dog unit, which works closely with Dickerson and other officers in smaller departments. "The demand went up significantly after 9/11," said Montgomery County Police Sgt. The Rockville police department started its K-9 Unit in 2004, making it one of several municipal departments that have invested in the police dogs in recent years. Police dogs are in high demand these days, as their training has become increasingly sophisticated and terrorism-wary jurisdictions find them to be pivotal tools to help prevent attacks and investigate crimes.Īlthough it has a canine unit, Prince George's County restricts the use of police dogs - an outgrowth of a 1999 Justice Department civil rights investigation following a report that dozens of people had suffered serious injuries from attacks by police dogs. "We did a track, and he found them hidden in the bushes," said Dickerson, one of a growing number of canine officers nationwide who work in small and medium-size police departments. Kyle Dickerson and his partner, Rocko, a German shepherd. The heist, Rockville police said, could have been one more unsolved county robbery had it not been for the prompt response of Cpl. The men - unable to open the register - fled the store after grabbing several cartons of cigarettes. A terrified clerk managed to lock himself in an office and call 911. Minutes after midnight on a recent Wednesday morning, three robbers walked into a 7-Eleven armed with a handgun and a knife.
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