Hondo came to our department in the summer of 2005, a few months before we were to start official training. In the time between his arrival and the start of the training class, Hondo and I got to know one another.
At the time, I was assigned to Patrol and Hondo spent several shifts inside his crate which had been stuffed into the back seat of my squad car. When it was slow or time for a break, I took him out to practice our sits/stays/recalls.
One thing we really had to work on at the start was the recall, or the “Hey! Get back here!” and it didn’t help that all of Hondo’s commands were in Czech. Apparently, my pronunciation of the Czech language was horrible because Hondo would totally ignore me as he went in the opposite direction to sniff trees, chase squirrels etc.
To remedy this, I attached a 50 ft leash to Hondo’s collar. When he retrieved a thrown toy, I would hold the end of the leash and gently pull him back towards me giving him the English command. When he got back to my side I was full of praise, and he quickly figured out that when I called, “Here!” it meant he was to return to me.
One night I scouted out a good place to work on our recall and selected the grass field in front of an elementary school. You know the buildings – the ones that are three story brick structures with metal fire escapes up the sides, old growth evergreens sprinkled about the yard, lots of light? It was the perfect backdrop for our training, which went something like this:
- hook 50 ft leash to Hondo’s collar
- have Hondo remain in a sit at my side, with his attention drawn to the toy I was preparing to throw
- throw the toy
- give Hondo the command to fetch the toy
- watch as Hondo breaks into a sprint
- look down to see a loop of the 50ft leash wrapped around my left ankle
- try to free my foot from the rapidly disappearing length of leash
- realize I was not going to be quick enough and brace myself for impact
- have my left leg snap up and forward
- hop like mad on my right foot to try and stay upright
- fail miserably at one-legged hopping
- crash to the ground, flat on my back
- get skidded across the grass for about 6 ft
- have my dog come back to me, drop the toy on my head and sniff my face as if to ask what the heck I was doing lying down on the job
I started laughing, feeling like a complete idiot, but my guffaw must have sounded a bit winded as a tentative voice floated out over the night air from the direction of the fire escape, “Are you okay?”
Well, you would have though someone had stuck me with a hot poker. I sucked in a gasp, stopped laughing and looked around.
“We’re up here,” a second voice called from the direction of the fire escape.
Up near the top of the metal stairs were two teenagers, sitting side by side and watching the three-ring circus act unfolding before them. They waved when I spotted them. Oh dear. I waved back and let out another laugh as I picked myself up and untangled the leash from my leg.
“I’m fine, nothing hurt but my pride,” I called back, “It’s okay to laugh, you know, that must have looked pretty funny.”
“Yes, it did,” one of them said. “Can you do that again?”
How appropriate that the traditional gift on a one year anniversary is one of paper.
Today marks one year with Behind the Blue Line, a concept first dreamed about and then brought to fruition.
Even though this blog is read online, the writing itself stems from a need to indulge in the written word, to let flow onto ‘paper’ the thoughts and experiences that shape a profession, and to prove without a doubt the officers of the Vancouver Police Department are good people.
The stories I’ve shared could be told a dozen times over with the names of other officers in the place of mine and perhaps with only a slight change to the circumstances. My stories are not unique, only the telling is.
Policing is a calling, not just a career. I really do hope I’ve made this clear.
I love my job. Most officers I know love their jobs. Even though we often feel under-appreciated and under attack from various levels of the citizenry, we do this job knowing the world is a better place because of it. We are aware of the silent majority who support us and every thankyou and kind word does not go unnoticed.
Indeed, they stay with us always.
This blog started out with tentative baby steps. I felt my way through media reports, current news topics and stories based on experiences from my days at work. I initially tried to blog every day but this proved to be too difficult with a very demanding full-time job. To compromise, I’ve settled into writing 2-3 times a week, which seems to suit most people just fine.
What became abundantly clear was readers (you) had little interest in news they could read/watch elsewhere. Instead, readers wanted the raw story of what happens to an officer behind the wheel of a police car, what happens when a citizen in need calls 911, and what happens behind the blue line that is policing.
From the time I’ve started this blog I’ve discovered there are those who think police officers should not write about their daily happenings, that to do so is sacrilege. I’ve received hate mail and rude comments.
But I’ve also learned there is a great need for people not exposed to the world of policing to be given a front row seat so they may better understand what it is we do and why we do it, because with understanding comes acceptance.
To balance the negative and positive I share what I can and there are topics I will simply not write about – undercover work, current projects, departmental politics or significant news events like the Dziekanski Taser incident. Other stories, ones that will not compromise the safety of my fellow officers, are the ones I can share.
Of those stories told over the last year, the following have garnered the most attention:
Hopefully, the end result of a year’s work is that the curtain has been pulled back, just a little, to allow you a glimpse into what life as a police officer is like.
Thank you to the Vancouver Police Department for their support, to Rob at iContext.com for taking care of the technical and design aspects of the blog and being there for every question I’ve had, and to the Vancouver Sun for choosing to run with some of the topics covered here and for giving me the opportunity of joining their writing team.
My biggest thanks go to you, the reader, for without your continued support and interest this blog would have fallen. Your emails and comments are a measure officers can judge themselves against in hopes of never falling short.
And most of all, thank you for your acceptance of police officers everywhere.
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
A call from a woman, wounded and bleeding inside her home.
A stranger had broken in, thrown her to the floor. He beat her, robbed her, cut her.
The entire district was going - ERT (SWAT), patrol, K9 units.
We were ready. We were going to find him.
ERT made their approach.
I knew something was wrong when ERT came out of the house with their weapons at the low ready as a patrol officer lead a distraught but uninjured woman from the home. She was rambling on and on, and the officer’s radio broadcast brought the house of cards that was this call tumbling to the ground.
“Slow all responding units down – this call is going to be unfounded.”
____________
Another day, another unfounded call.
But in this case, the woman would not be charged with public mischief. She was transported to hospital and checked into the psych ward under the Mental Health Act.
Normally, such calls create an incredible amount of frustration among officers due to the wasted resources. This time, the call brought no anger from responding units, only a sense of sadness at the woman’s plight.
I’ve been working PSD Hondo for four years. In the scheme of things, four years means I am still in the infant stages of understanding exactly what it is I do for a living. Unfortunately, four years also means Hondo is at the halfway point of his working life.
So just when we are starting to figure it out the end is already in sight. This is ever more apparent after receiving a wonderful email from an RCMP dog handler who is currently posted near the East Coast of Canada.
He wrote me a couple of weeks ago, and said my perspective of a ‘new handler with her first dog’ was refreshing and brought back many memories for him. He is currently working his fourth dog and has one more year experience as a dog handler than I do as a police officer.
You do the math. He’s been a dog handler for a long time and likely has forgotten more about handling a police dog than I will ever learn, and when he gives evidence in a criminal court, the judges really pay attention. The level of expertise he brings to the witness stand cannot be disregarded.
He’s one lucky cop. He’s worked four dogs. I will work only one. But that is a topic I’m not going to get into for fear of poking the sleeping dragon.
Then today, at a training session, the expertise and knowledge we (the VPD) have within our own department was clear. I learned a lot today, and am grateful to the experienced handlers and ex-handlers who always come out to ensure we are exposed to the best they have to offer.
Train like you work – as if it means something.
Because in the end, just when you think you may have figured it out, life throws you something unexpected and you realize there is so much more to learn.
During my career I’ve entrusted my life to other officers knowing those officers had my back.
It’s no different in the Dog Squad.
Even though my four-legged partner can’t talk, the two of us have our own lines of communication. Any dog handler or long time dog owner knows what I’m talking about.
A head twitch can mean the ‘bad guy’ is around the next corner, a very high tail can mean a cat is in the vicinity, and a nudge with his nose can mean my partner is playful or melencholy – depending on the lay of his ears.
We’ve been in some tight spots, but by working together as a single unit we are able to get the job done. I rely on his sense of smell, his keen sense of hearing, and his unwavering loyalty to do as I bid him. He relies on me to be the ‘brains behind the braun’, to think about how we get deployed, and to keep us both as safe as possible.
Today, PSD Hondo relied on me in another way.
We were assisting with the investigation of a serious crime, and had been called in to do a evidence/property search of an elevated garden in Downtown Vancouver. We had just arrived at the scene and were making our way to the area to be searched when, for some reason, PSD Hondo vaulted the cement wall we were next to.
We were two stories up.
Above a concrete parkade.
I yelled, “No!” as the officer behind me yelled at the same time, and I pulled back hard on Hondo’s leash. Hondo caught his paws on the ledge, his ears went back and his eyes rolled in my direction. I raced my hands up the leash, trying to keep Hondo on the ledge while trying to get close enough to grab him. I was not quick enough.
My partner disappeared over the edge.
The leash went taught. I knew the collar around Hondo’s neck would act as a ligature, so I ran to the edge while trying to absorb the shock by leveraging my arms out. I looked over and saw Hondo, writhing around like a fish, dangling in mid-air.
Pulling him back up was not an option. He’d be strangled by his own body weight.
So I let the leash burn through my hands and I lowered Hondo to the pavement below as quickly as possible. Even at twenty feet the leash wasn’t quite long enough, and Hondo dropped the last few feet. As soon as his paws touched down I told him to lay down. He did so, his ears flat against his head.
I raced back through the building we had just come through and burst out through the parkade door. Hondo was still laying there. My hands flew over his neck, his shoulders and his legs.
Physically, he was fine.
Emotionally? Well, if anyone tries to tell you dogs do not feel emotion then you tell them they are wrong. Hondo shrunk his body against my legs. He must have thought I was mad, but what he was reading was my fear.
We had a few moments in that concrete parking lot. I ruffled Hondo’s fur to reassure him everything was good, and he gave me an almost human expression of “Let’s NOT do that again, okay?”
A few minutes later we were back at work conducting our search, which ended in success. Hondo’s reward for finding things is a game of tug-o-war, and let me tell you – no dog has ever seen such a great game of tug-o-war as my dog saw today.
This is for one of our dispatchers…..you know who you are.
Let me explain something before I get too much farther into this, and give you a mini-crash course on how handlers and police dogs communicate. Police Service Dog Hondo is trained on human scent. I watch and read his body language when he is tracking a person. Every little nuance means something, so it’s up to me to figure out what Hondo is ’saying’. Sometimes the communication comes easy, but other times Hondo exhibits behaviour I’ve never seen before.
Last year, on a beautiful hot summer night, Hondo and I responded to a call of a break and enter (it may have even been a theft from auto…the facts surrounding the actual crime itself are a bit fuzzy; the reason for being will soon make itself apparent). The suspect fled on foot prior to our arrival, the patrol units were setting up containment and Hondo and I responded directly to the scene.
After speaking to witnesses, I gave Hondo his command to track and soon we were after the fleeing suspect. We had a vague physical description on the suspect – white male in his 40’s, brown hair, wearing a dark coloured hoodie and jeans – so I kept an eye on Hondo’s body language as well as an eye out for anyone matching that description as we tracked through yards, across streets and over a couple of fences.
It wasn’t until we tracked for two blocks that Hondo lost the scent, and it looked as if the suspect had made good his escape in a vehicle. The walk back to our own vehicle took Hondo and I into a school yard with a big, hilly field. We were crossing the field when Hondo perked up. Something at the other end of the school yard had caught the dog’s attention.
Hondo was giving me all the physical cues that he was working human scent, but there were new little twitches and ear tweaks in his movements I had not seen before. Perhaps he had located the suspect and the suspect was armed? Was that why Hondo was acting strange? Maybe the suspect had commited suicide and it was death my dog was reacting to? There was a quiet, repetitive sound coming from the area of the trees near the base of the hill, and in my minds eye I saw the suspect’s body hanging from a branch, his sneakered feet gently tapping against the tree trunk as he swung from a noose. I know the thought is a bit morbid, but you have to be prepared for the worst in this job, and what the heck was that noise?
In any event, I picked up that something was not quite right. I unholstered my pistol and moved towards the sound from a position of cover. Hondo can be a very stealthy dog so he did not make a sound, and the faint glow from nearby street lights illuminated his silhouette. My dog wanted to go towards the sound but he kept stopping and putting his nose up as if he was tasting the air, and his hackles had raised the slightest bit. Not good. It meant Hondo was on high alert as well.
Together as a team, we closed in. When we were in position, I lit up the area with my flashlight and yelled out a warning, “POLICE, DON’T MOVE!”
I had expected one of several things – a corpse swinging from a tree, a suspect to come out of the trees armed with some type of weapon, or shaking branches signalling a quick retreat. What I had not expected was the flurry of arms and legs as two naked bodies tried to cover themselves.
It wasn’t an armed or deceased suspect my dog had reacted to – it was two teenaged kids having a midnight romp in the park.
The girl screamed, grabbed at the blanket and rolled away from my light. The boy’s plaster-coloured face was a shocked oval as he hauled his pants up from their resting place at his ankles, his manhood no longer so interested in what it had been doing. I let my flashlight extinguish in similar fashion.
Oh dear.
The next few moments were a series of mumbled apologies from the boy and high, squeeky notes from the girl as she scrambled to gather her clothing. Hondo was wagging his tail and he obviously wanted to go check the kids out, more out of curiousity than anything else. It was all I could do to keep the laughter from braying out and we left the two kids to recover what was left of their dignity so Hondo and I could make good our own escape.
PSD Hondo
I don’t usually post on weekends, but today is my partner’s birthday. I know, I know…it’s a bit sappy, but all the doggy people out there will appreciate this.
Happy Birthday to PSD Hondo!
Now we’re off to work - the best present he could get today would be to apprehend a ‘bad guy’ (and there’s not too much sappy about that).
Yesterday, Monday, February 9th, 2009, saw two handlers say good-bye to their retired partners. PD Spiker and PD Jackal retired from active police dog duty within the last few years, and lived out their lives with their handlers and their families. Thier names will be added to list of those Police Service Dogs who served their handlers, the department, and the citizen’s of Vancouver.
Spiker and Jackal will forever be remembered as ‘Guardians of the Night’.
The other night, I had the opportunity to take a Block Two recruit out with me for the shift. This officer, ‘Cst. X’, had completed the first stage of police training, and was part way through the practical side of training, before being due to head back to the Academy in a few weeks.
Cst. X had learned and been tested on his knowledge of municipal, provincial and federal law as it applies to policing. He had been taught how to use the equipment he had been issued, and had been run through a barrage of training scenarios before being approved for Block Two. The night he came out with me, Cst. X had only been wearing the Vancouver Police uniform for six weeks.
Cst. X impressed me with his awareness of his surroundings, his tact and his questions. He was eager to learn and was most interested in what he could do as a patrol officer to assist the Dog Squad when responding to a call. As we talked about radio procedures, what to do if he got behind a stolen car, and how to treat a crime scene to preserve the start point for a dog track, Cst X asked what decisions dog handlers have to go through before deploying their dogs. The resulting conversation covered a lot of ground, and neither of us knew Cst. X would soon be involved in a call that would demonstrate how quickly officers have to make decisions based on very little information.
As we were still talking, radio dispatched us to a break and enter in progress. A home owner called 911 to report someone had broken into their tenant’s basement suite, and the suspect was still inside. Patrol units responded and contained the suite. As we drove there, I explained to Cst. X several scenarios of what could happen. The person inside could be related to the tenant. The tenant was out of town and perhaps the person was a house-sitter. The person inside could be a bona-fide crook, and if so, Cst. X would get to see Hondo in action. Or the ‘person’ inside could really just be the sounds of pipes creaking, making the home owner believe someone had broken in.
We arrived at the scene and went to the suite door, which had been damaged. One of the officers obtained the key from the landlord, and when we were ready, she unlocked the door and tried to push it open. The door immediately caught on the security lock which had been secured from the inside. Through the opening, I saw a man sitting on the couch – he jumped to feet, looked at us, and yelled when we announced ourselves. He gathered a blanket to his chest, looking at us with wide eyes. My first thought was, “Dear Lord, he has Down’s Syndrome”, and I backed Hondo off. The man then tried to barricade the door shut, but we were able to force the door open, and officers moved in and took the man into custody.
It was discovered later that the man did not have Downs Syndrome, even thought he had the flat facial profile, upward slant to the eyes and small ears usually associated with the condition (thank you KidsHealth.org for the information on the physical characteristics). He was ultimately arrested for breaking and entering, and the investigation is still ongoing to determine links, if any, with the tenant.
Cst. X asked me why I had back Hondo off. Even though we were responding to a break and enter with all the information leading me to believe the man inside the suite had committed a crime, I decided at the last second to not deploy the police dog based on my extremely brief observation about the man’s physical characteristics. Turned out my observations were incorrect, but at the time, I did not know that. There were a hundred other little contributing factors involved in that decision, and it came down to me trusting my gut instinct to back the dog off. In this case, it was better to err on the side of caution. Every case is different.
After hearing my explanation, Cst. X sat back and was silent for a few moments before he commented on how fast a police officer has to make decisions, especially in circumstances where there is a use of force. I explained that each officer is responsible for their own ‘use of force’, and has to be able to articulate their own actions, regardless if their situation involved a traffic ticket, a hard arrest, or a shooting. We, as police officers, are expected to remain calm under stress, and to make split-second decisions that could have life or death consequences. It is easy to arm-chair quarterback these types of calls after the fact, but in the heat of the moment, you have to trust yourself to make the right decision.
At that, Cst. X took a deep breath, as if contemplating what a serious career he has ahead of him. In truth, he does have a serious career. He has been given a great amount of responsibility. But if he is anything like most of the other officers I know, and I have the feeling he is, Cst. X will do us proud.
VPD Dog Squad
Our uniforms, with their subdued shoulder flashes, are always covered in dog hair. If it’s been a busy shift, our pant legs are likely dotted with mud, and we’ll have baseball caps jammed on our heads to contain our hair (if we have any) and to keep the Vancouver rain out of our eyes. A mud-splattered uniform means we’ve been working hard and enjoying every second of it. As far as we’re concerned there is no better job within the Vancouver Police Department.
Such is the life of a police dog handler.
Nose prints on the insides of the truck windows. The plates of stolen cars written across the backs of our hands. Three different police radios chattering at the same time. An eye always to the road, watching for anything untoward. All of these are a daily occurrence for those of us fortunate enough to work alongside four-legged partners. The dogs, regardless if they are trained to look for people, property, drugs, bombs or firearms, are the reason for our job satisfaction.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – if you ask any handler who his or her best partner has been, you will get the same answer, “My dog.”
Formed in 1959 with the addition of four dogs to the department, the Dog Squad now has an authorized strength of eighteen handler/dog teams. At the moment, there are seventeen active working dogs:
Ace, Blade, Blix, Bosco, Des, Diesel, Gus, Hondo, Jag, Jet, Knight, Magnum, Nash, Shack, Storm, Teak and Turbo.
The other two dogs who made a part of the team have very recently retired from duty – Bear and Raider. All of these dogs have their own Collector Cards - if you see a dog handler out in the city, please feel free to ask them for a trading card.
For more information on the police dogs of the VPD, please visit the Dog Squad website. For more stories from inside the Dog Squad and other sections of the VPD, stay tuned…
Until then,
Sandra
