How police dog teams assist in the search and rescue of missing persons

Australian Community Media

The National Missing Persons Coordination Centre (NMPCC) visited the ACT Dog Team to learn about how their team assist in the search and rescue of missing persons. Courtesy: AFP/NMPCC

Transcript

00:00Leading Senior Constable Peter Hockings with the ACT Dog Team, currently working a general

00:09purpose police dog by the name of Rogue.

00:13Been together with Rogue for two years now and we spend pretty much every waking minute

00:19together rolling around in the car.

00:23So in the event of a missing person, the dog team generally has at least one dog on shift

00:29at any one time, including overnight.

00:32We would respond to a missing person in the community by providing, first of all, a set

00:40of eyes for general duties units to assist them in locating the person in the first instance.

00:48In the event that we're required to use a dog to locate and track a person who is missing.

00:56Generally speaking, Canberra is only a small area, so we can be from one side of town to

01:02the other within 20 minutes or so.

01:06The dogs are usually already kitted up ready to go with a collar.

01:10If necessary, we can put a harness on to make it easier to track.

01:15Generally speaking, we are one of the first teams to respond to such an event, especially

01:21if it's a young child or an older elderly member of the community.

01:25We help out whenever we can, makes it a lot easier to locate people with obviously the

01:31more people you have on staff searching.

01:35So we primarily use the dogs because of their olfaction capability.

01:39A dog can smell a lot better than what we can.

01:43They can smell odour.

01:44We obviously can't see it or we can't smell it like they can.

01:48Their capability far exceeds anything that we have in terms of a person's capabilities.

01:56The dog that we train, they are very, very capable of locating odour.

02:03That's primarily what we do.

02:05It's our bread and butter and that's what we focus a lot of our training on.

02:10So the AFP general purpose team currently have five general purpose dogs on staff.

02:15We are capable of deploying within the ACT region, also nationally and internationally

02:19as required.

02:20So when we're out in the field with our general purpose dogs, I take the weather considerations

02:28into account pretty much straight away.

02:30So we're looking for wind direction, speed, things like that.

02:35Obviously the more wind, the more it pushes the odour around.

02:38Also how hot it is, how hot the ground is.

02:42All the air currents come into effect when we're searching.

02:46We need to consider barriers in vegetation and things like that.

02:50If there's a body of water and such things that are going to affect where odour is going

02:57to be located.

02:58Our dogs may not necessarily track and locate odour where the person actually walked, but

03:05the wind may have pushed the odour off to one side.

03:07So that's where the dog will be working when the odour pool is the strongest.

03:13So I work with Rogue.

03:14He's a four-year-old German Shepherd.

03:17He actually came from a family in Queensland and we were lucky enough to purchase this

03:22dog to put on to a 16-week basic course in order to qualify him as a general purpose dog.

03:30Right from the start, this dog displayed an excellent aptitude for tracking and searching.

03:38Amongst other things that we do, we do search open areas, so take the dog off-lead and allow

03:44him to work the way that he sees fit.

03:47So whether he's tracking or air-sensing, he will also locate people in a certain area.

03:55These dogs are trained to apprehend.

03:57They apprehend on command, but also in defence of myself or themselves if they come under

04:03attack.

04:04These dogs are trained to search buildings as well.

04:07We spend a fair bit of time training them to do so, because at the end of the day it's

04:12still odour, whether it's tracking for odour or inside a building.

04:17So the average day, what it looks like for myself, I'm up at 5am.

04:23Generally on day shift, I will go and have a look at the dog, make sure he's okay, check

04:28him over, do a health check, put him in the car and then spend about 20 minutes cleaning

04:34kennels.

04:35From there, once I've logged on to the system, I can see what jobs have occurred overnight

04:40and anything pressing that requires a canine's attention.

04:45We do have an on-call capability, so we'll also see who's been called out if at all overnight

04:52and whether that's any relevance to myself.

04:55From there, generally speaking, I'll spend a few hours travelling around the ACT, just

05:00getting a feel for the day and seeing what's happening.

05:04Some days usually start fairly busy and other days, I don't want to use the Q word, but

05:09they are fairly quiet.

05:11On those days, we might come out to the office, get some paperwork done, we might exercise

05:16the dog, exercise ourselves and then be ready to respond to any kind of jobs that happen

05:23throughout the day in the ACT.

05:25So the type of training that we like to use, in terms of rewards, most of the dogs love

05:31a good game of playing with a ball.

05:34We have Kongs, balls on a rope, things like that.

05:37We also have tug toys for the dogs to play with because they are motivated by fulfilling

05:44certain genetic desires within their brain.

05:47They like to play tug of war and things like that, so we can use that to manipulate their

05:51drives to suit whatever training purposes that we have in that particular session.

05:58So Rogue's favourite activity after a hard day's work is to sit on the couch with the

06:03kids and enjoy a lot of downtime.

06:05He's one of those dogs that has an incredible switch.

06:08When he's at work, he's at work, but when he's at home, he's a family dog first and

06:13foremost.

06:14He enjoys playing on the trampoline with a tennis ball in his mouth and engages in fun

06:19activities.

06:21Loves the beach and also loves the creeks around town.

06:25So the biggest issue that I certainly face when searching for a missing person is misdirection.

06:32Sometimes people will give you inaccurate information and you will have cause to act

06:37on that information without realising that you're actually going the wrong way or you're

06:41searching for the wrong person.

06:44It's one of the challenges that we need to take into account and there's certain things

06:48that we can do to negate that possibility and that's talk to multiple people or if we've

06:53got CCTV footage available.

06:57It's very common these days for people to have it on their houses, so it's of great

07:00benefit to us if there is a missing person and people can check their CCTV.

07:05That will enable us to help locate somebody a lot quicker.

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