The use of police dogs around North Carolina has been on the rise in the last de cade, and the Raleigh Police Department’s K-9 unit has grown steadily over that time.
Axe, Jens, Phantom, Mar ko, Onya, Mex, Kito, Tuckey, Jago, Cobra and Dingo help officers with the police detect bombs and drugs, find miss ing people and evidence, and protect their handlers.
“Twice a year we certify the K-9s with the Police K-9 As sociation,” Lt. Tim Tomczak said. “It is a voluntary asso ciation, but it shows that our dogs are some of the best in the country.”
The Raleigh K-9 Unit is made up of nine patrol dogs and two bomb dogs.
“The two bomb dogs that only do bomb work have got to have great noses, and these other nine dogs have got to be able to handle a va riety of other tasks,” Tom czak said. “They’re like people. Some dogs are good at detecting while others are good at being aggressive.”
Police send the bomb dogs in to sweep areas that are un der bomb threats and stops along the car routes of high-priority targets that visit.
“If a dog is trained to find drugs or track, and they fail, it’s unfortunate, but if they don’t find an explosive, that’s a very big deal,” Tom czak said.
Patrol dogs, on the other hand, are used to detect drugs, track people fleeing a crime scene, apprehension of suspects and building search es as necessary.
The dogs track by using the odor of disturbed ground, not from the scent of a piece of clothing like most people think.
“They can track by the scent of broken glass, dis turbed earth and even dis turbed dirt in a parking lot,” Tomczak said.
The dogs can also look for discarded objects, such as a weapon a suspect has thrown into a field. They do this based on scent discrimi nation.
“The dog does not know that it smells a weapon or discarded money, but the dog knows that it doesn’t smell like the rest of the field,” Tomczak said.
The dogs receive a lot of ba sic training before they even join a K-9 Unit. Most of the dogs start the training with the police between 1 and 2 years old.
“We expect the dogs to do some ba sic bite and tracking work as well as to not be afraid of ag gressive peo ple,” Tom czak said. “We need dogs that are capable of tracking drugs and people in addition to being able to be aggressive to apprehend a suspect.”
After the police purchases a dog, the department brings it back to Raleigh to live with its K-9 officer. The dog is then put through 14-20 weeks of training with its handler be fore they hit the streets.
“The K-9 unit officers go to training every other Tues day for a full 10 hours unless something breaks loose in the city and they have to go re spond to that,” Tomczak said.
Some of the training the dogs go through is focused on agility, discipline and train ing commands. Tomczak said one of the most important things a police dog needs to know is when to stop.
“When you send it to ap prehend someone, it needs to stop when it gets called back,” Tomczak said. “We’re not looking for dogs that are just willing to take down a bad guy.”
The dogs are also trained to defend and protect their han dlers and are very specific to the officers they work with.
Tomczak said that even though he spends a great deal of time around the dogs and sees them on a regular basis, if he were to push a dog’s han dler the dog would immedi ately attack him.
The K-9 unit dogs will work as long as they are physically able or until their handler retires or gets promoted or transferred, as it’s often diffi cult to retrain them for a new handler. Instead, they retire into the custody of the officer they worked with.
Working with the Raleigh K-9 unit is a coveted position. In the past five years there has only been one position open for a new human to serve as an officer on the police K-9 unit. According to Tomczak, 28 well-qualified officers ap plied.
The K-9 unit trains for 10 hours every other Tuesday.
