The Dog Squad

by Vikki Petraitis

  All dog handlers get bitten sooner or later, and Gary had earned his scar early. But, despite the bite, Gary had taken a shine to Digger and believed that he would make a terrific police dog. There was just something about him – call it a dog X-factor – that was hard to describe, but handlers always know when they see it.

  Gary had pet dogs as a child, and had always felt confident around them. Perhaps that was why the early bite didn’t faze him. He got advice from other handlers who had aggressive dogs, and then put all his energy into learning how to harness Digger’s aggression.

  It did prove to be a battle of wills in those early days. Every time Digger got a correction, he would want to take a nip at either Gary or one of the other dogs around. The head of the squad, Senior Sergeant Paul Deimos, gave Gary a valuable piece of advice. ‘You’ve got to con him,’ he said. What the boss meant was that the volatile behaviour was due to insecurity, and the corrections were feeding the insecurity. Gary could force the dog to do something, or he could con him; he could use positive reinforcement to have the dog want to do what was asked of him.

  Gary switched his training method to almost total positive reinforce­ment. He used food rewards, even though they were frowned on in the Dog Squad at the time. Gary realised that the phrase ‘you can catch more flies with honey’ applied equally to dogs. With lots of reward and play at work, Digger came along in leaps and bounds. It became obvious that the dog would do anything for a couple of pieces of kibble, or some cut-up Strasburg.

  Right from the start, Digger showed a fanatical desire to retrieve. He would pick up anything. A lot of dogs won’t pick up metal, but if Gary threw a length of chain, Digger would run and grab it and bring it straight back. At the same time, he wouldn’t touch anything he was told not to touch. At Gary’s house – a farm north of the city – Digger wouldn’t touch the chickens, and after a while he even learnt to herd them into their coop at the end of the day.

  Digger was bigger than most other dogs at the squad, and because he bit Gary in the early days, he earned a bit of a reputation; he made other handlers a little nervous. If people gave off a fear vibe, Digger would react to it by growling at them, and it became a catch 22. However, when Digger was away from the squad he was fine. He could be patted by other police officers who didn’t have an inkling of his reputation. He was also terrific around Gary’s small children.

  Digger trained at the Dog Squad for five months. He was socialised in other environments as well, such as schools, railway stations and bus stops. His training also included walking up and down fire escape-type stairs with gaps in them, so he wouldn’t be nervous of similar stairs in the future. Once Digger conquered his initial insecurities, he was a great police dog. Indeed, he ended up being the best dog that came out of his training course. Digger also showed a particular aptitude for criminal work. In training he would launch at the hapless handlers wearing the protective padded sleeve, often sending them flying. After months of daily runs, games and training, Digger came to believe that his handler was the greatest thing in the world. The feeling was mutual.

  Gary had done a lot of game play with Digger during training. After a track, Gary would say, ‘Hey Dig!’ and run away. Digger would chase him like a puppy. At the end of the course Gary’s colleagues gave him a gift: a small package of hay and a child’s spade – hay and dig – to symbolise how often they’d heard him yell it out. The course break-up celebration was held at the Last Laugh theatre restaurant in Smith Street, Collingwood on a Friday night; and it was to that very same place that Gary was called on his first job a couple of days later.

  An alarm had gone off at the Last Laugh and Gary was sent to inspect the premises. Commanded to search, Digger made his way through the restaurant. Gary could see that his dog was excited by the new smells and the new environment – so excited that he went to lift his leg on one of the stage curtains. Police dogs are trained to go to the toilet on command – they are never allowed to go at a job. Gary quickly corrected Digger, and urged him on to continue the search. In hindsight, Gary felt that this police dog faux pas was due to both dog and handler feeling a little nervous on their first job.

  Every dog handler has that moment in the early days where they have to take a leap of faith and trust in their dog’s abilities. Real police work is very different from training, but Gary was confident in Digger’s passion for retrieving and taking down crooks. All police work is a big game for police dogs. But even so, entering the working environment from training is a very different kettle of fish. Gary had to learn what Digger was like on the road.

  After a couple of weeks working with another handler as a mentor, it was decided that Digger had the right enthusiasm and skill to go out with Gary alone. It was on their first solo job together that Gary began to see what Digger could really do. The job was in Sunshine. A wiry young burglar had escaped from the police cells and was on the run. While in custody, the burglar had boasted that he could outrun any police dog. It turned out he was wrong.

  According to a tip-off, the guy had set up a tent in scrubland somewhere near the Maribyrnong River to hide from police. The plan was to hit the place early in the morning and tighten the search area by doing a large sweep of the perimeter and then slowly move inwards. When Gary and Digger got there the local cops had already narrowed down the search area considerably. The terrain was less than ideal – a big expanse of grassland, scattered with waist-high prickly Scotch thistles.

  Gary and Digger began combing the area too. It wasn’t long before the searchers saw a tent down the slope of a hill. Gary stood back with the dog and watched from a distance as the uniform cops went in and nabbed the crook. Unfortunately, the locals made the mistake of not cuffing the cocky young man, and moments later he took off, running like a hare. The cops took off after him. Digger couldn’t join the chase because if the dog was released and ordered to bite, he wouldn’t differentiate between the cops and the crook.

  Gary yelled at the uniforms to stop running, which they did. He called on the crook to stop running or the police dog would be released, but the young man didn’t stop. The moment Gary and Digger overtook the other police officers, Gary let the dog off the lead and commanded him to take the offender down. Digger took off like a shot, and Gary followed as fast as he could. Down a dip in the terrain, the dog disappeared from sight. Over the next rise, Gary saw Digger closing in. ‘Good boy! Good boy!’ he shouted in encouragement, but Digger didn’t need it. The dog took a flying leap at the young man and bowled him to the ground with a bite to the knee.

  Gary quickly caught up and called the dog off – much to the relief of the young man. Gary noted the damage from the bite; it was a good bite, made without causing too much harm. Still, the young chap wasn’t game to get up and take off again. ‘Good boy!’ said Gary enthusiastically, giving Digger a pat on the head.

  The young man was cuffed and walked out of the parkland by the uniformed cops, and Gary praised Digger all the way to the car. Dogs understand how pleased their handlers are by the level of praise and excitement they receive; it’s one of the strongest connections between dog and handler. For Digger, the excitement and praise was the reward, and each successful job cemented that understanding.

  Back at the police station, Gary had to inspect the young man’s bite wound more closely; every bite had to be reported back to the bosses at the Dog Squad. After he was finished, Gary made sure to tell the young man that, even if it had worked once, it was always a mistake to try and outrun a police dog. As the man was led away, it occurred to Gary that the attraction of working with police dogs was in the fairytale sense of immediate justice; bad guy on the run, release the dog, bad guy on the ground, bad guy in the police cells.

  From that first take-down Gary could tell that Digger could do the job with more gusto than he had ever seen in a dog. But then, every handler is biased; his dog is the world’s best.

  Once Digger’s training was complete, Gary took him to the local primary school and intr
oduced the kids to the work of a police dog. He did a demonstration for his young audience. First, he put Digger in the back of the car around a corner, and then he organised two of the local kids – boys that he knew – to rub their hands on some objects, and then run off and hide them somewhere in the school yard.

  The minute Digger came back he scoured the yard, then headed to the sandpit and dug up a cap. The kids couldn’t believe their eyes. Then Digger fetched a tennis ball hidden under some mulch near the swing. It was a demonstration that the kids would never forget, and they would mention it for years to come when they saw Gary in the community.

  On one job, hoons had taken over a suburban McDonald’s car park. The situation had turned nasty and local police were struggling to contain it. Gary and Digger arrived, ready to help. A sergeant dressed in coat and hat strode over towards the dog and handler to brief Gary on the situation. Gary tried to stop him coming closer. ‘Tell me from there,’ he called.

  But the sergeant – straight as a ramrod, obviously a stickler for rules and rank – didn’t stop. When he got close enough, Digger launched. Gary called him off, but not before the dog had torn the sleeve of the sergeant’s pristine coat clean off. There was a scuttling of running feet, followed by a screeching of tyres, as all the hoons jumped in their cars and fled. A minute later the car park was empty.

  It seemed that the hoons didn’t want to chance an encounter with a vicious police dog that had started with the sergeant.

  ‘When a dog does something different, investigate.’ That was the advice Gary always gave to other handlers. ‘If he doesn’t come when you call him, what is he trying to tell you? What has he found?’

  One night in Richmond, Gary was called to a factory that made flavours for milkshakes. There had already been a number of burglaries in the area, so Gary and another handler conducted a search inside the huge factory. The two handlers and dogs split up. Gary released Digger to search, and moved him among enormous vats of flavouring. Digger lifted his head and got high on his front paws, sniffing the air; he had picked up a scent.

  Gary and the other dog handler both took their dogs up to the next floor. Both dogs picked up a scent and began indicating strongly – towards the ceiling. Looking up, Gary could see that a piece of glass in an old skylight had been pushed back. Considering the skylight was over 10 metres high, the two handlers could hardly believe that a burglar might have escaped that way; however, the glass had been moved and both dogs had their noses in the air. They had to consider the possibility. The security guard at the site told Gary how to get up onto the roof a safer way, through a nearby manhole. The other handler took the dogs back downstairs as Gary made his way out onto the roof of the factory.

  On the roof, Gary could see a discarded television set, and further on, a man lying in the factory’s side guttering with nothing next to him but a 12-metre drop to the street below. Gary drew his weapon and ordered the man to come out. The man crawled out from the gutter and headed over to Gary, nearly slipping through the skylight.

  ‘No, no!’ cried Gary, worried he’d fall two storeys to the concrete floor below. As Gary passed by the skylight, he peered inside and saw smudges in the dust on the roof trusses. This guy must have the skills of a monkey, he thought.

  Gary took the burglar out via the manhole. Back in the factory, the burglar admitted to stealing the television that Gary had seen on the roof. The man said that he had tied the TV set around his neck with the power cord and swung himself onto the trusses, before escaping through the skylight. The wiry Hispanic guy was slim, with the muscly shoulders of a gymnast. He could have had a career in the circus.

  The job at the factory was a superb display of the value of police dogs; without them, there was no way an ordinary search would have found an offender on the roof. It also showed Gary that Digger was right on the money when it came to sniffing out crooks. The job had also required the police to exercise caution because a security guard had been shot at a recent factory robbery in the area. These burglaries seemed to come in spurts; the burglar would target particular suburbs, rob a bunch of factories and then lie low for a while before changing areas. Although Gary had only drawn his weapon a handful of times in his career, he hadn’t wished to take a chance with the burglar on the roof. There was something about the guy, the situation and the spate of factory robberies that had heightened Gary’s awareness.

  It turned out that the burglar from the roof could not be linked to the other factory burglaries. The other offender was still on the loose. Gary would find that out soon enough.

  The night began like any other. On 18 June 1985 Gary was working in the northern suburbs. He had another handler, Paul Wiseman, in the car with him, learning the ropes. Meanwhile, in the south-eastern suburb of Cheltenham, Sergeant Brian Stooke and Senior Constable Peter Steele had been doing surveillance in a factory area when a yellow Cortina drove past. There had been a recent series of burglaries in the area where the offender had gained access through the factory roofs. It was nearing midnight and the slowly cruising car immediately looked suspicious in the deserted industrial landscape.

  The officers stopped the car and radioed in a routine licence check on the driver, a Max Clark from South Clayton. Sergeant Stooke asked Clark to open his boot. It contained ropes and other tools that made the man a suspect. When Stooke suggested that Clark accompany the two officers back to the police station, the suspect took off running. Stooke took off after him.

  Clark stopped, turned, and fired a gun at Stooke, knocking the police officer to the ground. From the cover of the police car, Peter Steele returned fire until he was hit in the shoulder. Clark walked over to where Brian Stooke lay on the ground and shot him twice more.

  The next radio contact from Steele was urgent, and hit the police airwaves like an explosion: ‘Cheltenham 709! Urgent! Members shot! We need an ambulance! Quick! I’ve been shot in the arm. My sergeant has been shot at least three times with what feels like a bloody big gun. Please get that ambulance in a hurry!’

  As Steele radioed for help, Max Clark calmly climbed back into his car and drove off.

  In a critical police situation – especially a police shooting – it is all hands on deck. A command post was set up near Max Clark’s Clayton South home, and Gary Morrell and Digger were called in to join the search for the shooter. But the police could not storm Clark’s home without a search warrant; so while police were locating a magistrate to sign the warrant, Max Clark had slipped into his house, loaded up with weapons, switched cars and then made his escape.

  After the command post briefing, Gary Morrell and Paul Wiseman returned to wait in the Dog Squad car. Police dog handlers usually rode alone, so there was only one bulletproof vest in Gary’s car. Because Gary would be the siege dog handler on this manhunt, he put on the vest. If things turned pear-shaped, he would be in the front-line to take Max Clark down with the dog. Gary didn’t give too much thought to the danger he faced on that cold winter’s night. A lot of the time, jobs that began with danger ended with a lot of sitting around waiting.

  The wait was broken by an urgent radio message: police were chasing a green Ford Fairlane that belonged to Clark. There had been an alert to look out for any vehicles belonging to Clark, and police combing the area had spotted him.

  With Digger in the back, and Paul Wiseman riding shotgun, Gary headed off to join the pursuit. Over the radio, a wild police chase was evident as police from the ground and from the air called in their sightings. Air 490 – the police helicopter – was following from above as the green Ford sped along at 180 kilometres per hour. Clark went so fast he blew up the engine of the car; it swiftly lost momentum and rolled to a stop. Clark escaped on foot and was pursued by Constable Graeme Sayce and Sergeant Ray Kirkwood who screeched to a halt in their patrol car. The two police officers prepared to chase Clark down on foot. Instead, Clark turned back and charged at the police car, aiming his gun right at the two officers. He began shooting through the windscreen, and the off
icers ducked for cover. Then Clark came around to the passenger side, held his revolver double-handed in a combat stance, and shot through the window at Graeme Sayce.

  Sayce waved his revolver in the air, trying to repel the madman with return fire, at the same time thinking every moment might be his last. The police helicopter hovered overhead, its powerful spotlight illuminating the drama on the ground.

  Max Clark ducked around to the front of the police car and fired through the windscreen. Sergeant Ray Kirkwood was shot twice – in the shoulder first, and then in the head when another bullet ricocheted off the door pillar.

  For the second time in three hours, there was an urgent call over the radio: ‘Oakleigh 250! Urgent! Member’s been hit. Get an ambulance!’ Paramedics raced to take Ray Kirkwood to hospital. In the mayhem following the shooting, Clark got away again.

  Police at the command centre had begun to get an idea of who they were dealing with. ‘Max Clark’ was a Bulgarian army deserter and weapons expert whose real name was Pavel Marinoff. This explained his skill with weapons, and how he could fire on police and avoid being hit himself. When Gary heard that Clark had escaped again, he put out an urgent call: ‘When you get sight of this guy, contain the area and we can use the dog to track him.’ What Gary meant was that he would go in first – an especially dangerous command considering the gunman had just added to his tally of felled police officers.

  A report came in that there had been a sighting of Clark near Noble Park Primary School in Buckley Street. A witness reported seeing a man run across the road from the school and disappear into some houses. It was a place to start looking.