The Dog Squad

by Vikki Petraitis

  Gary’s adrenaline was rising, and he could hear groaning and whining from Digger’s cage in the back of the car. The dog could read the signs – urgent voices, flashing lights – indications that he would soon be let out for a job.

  Gary and Paul pulled up near the school and quickly spoke to the witness who had called in the sighting. They were joined by two heavily armed Special Operations Group operatives. Gary attached Digger’s harness and tracking line, and they took off in search of Clark.

  Outside a block of units, Digger picked up a scent. Nose down and pulling, the dog flew up the driveway with Gary, Paul and the two SOG officers close behind. They came to the back fence and, after checking that there wasn’t a shooter on the other side, they all jumped the fence into an area behind a church. The police officers took up positions, using trees as cover. Gary didn’t have his gun out because he was working the dog with both hands, but all the others did.

  Digger strained on the lead. He knew exactly where Clark had gone. Once the coast looked clear, Gary let Digger lead him to a nearby fence, which was nestled beside a garage. Digger began air sniffing, and Gary pointed silently to the fence so that the SOG behind him could see the direction that the dog was indicating. In seconds, Gary took in the wind direction – blowing towards the fence, downwind of the police. Digger indicated high, as if the man had gone over the fence. Gary headed towards the fence too, but he never made it over.

  A gun went off. Gary went down. Blood everywhere.

  As Gary fell forward, he hit his chin on the Dolphin torch strapped to his shoulder. The impact switched on the torch, which cast an eerie glow over blood spurting from somewhere with the same rhythm as Gary’s heartbeat. This isn’t good, he thought.

  Gary fumbled to turn off the torch-beam that made him a sitting duck. Gunfire rang out into the night.

  Gunfire.

  Return fire.

  Next to Gary, Paul stood emptying his police revolver in the direction of the garage roof. Gary could feel a huge pain in his chest and figured that was where he had been shot. His next thought was to hold on to his dog. If Digger was released, he could easily attack the SOG members, or Paul, who were all shooting. Without realising it, Gary had switched the lead over to his left hand. He realised that his right wrist had taken a bullet – that was the source of the blood.

  Clark jumped clear of the garage and ran off down the driveway. Because he had run into a suburban street, the SOG couldn’t fire after him. They stayed by Gary’s side. Paul jammed his radio button down and called for help: ‘Member down!’

  ‘What’s happened?’ a voice over the radio replied.

  ‘Gary’s been shot!’

  Because he was a dog handler, Paul was the only one who could get close to Gary on the ground; a frantic Digger kept the SOG members at bay. Gary flung the tracking line over to Paul, who took Digger across to a nearby fence and tied him up.

  Gary nursed his right arm, figuring that his bulletproof vest must have stopped the bullet to his chest. Hell of an impact though. ‘You need to get the car in here and load him in,’ Gary told Paul. He knew that Digger, in his current state, could be a danger to anyone but his handler.

  ‘Just stay there,’ said Paul.

  ‘I’m right.’ Gary tried to struggle to his feet, but the SOG officers told him to stay where he was.

  ‘We’ve got help on the way,’ one of them said.

  But while help was on its way, it would be a while before it could reach the wounded police officer. The ambulance had to be cleared to enter a scene, and because there was a gunman on the loose the ambulance couldn’t get anywhere near them.

  Gary was able to struggle into a sitting position against a tree. His colleagues had helped him wrap a jacket around his arm to try and staunch the bleeding. When it was clear Gary was okay, one of the SOG officers ran off to get the Dog Squad panel van. He reversed it into the churchyard and then he and the other SOG operative stood clear while Paul untied Digger from behind the fence.

  ‘Car up!’ called Gary, and Digger ran to the back of the car and jumped in. Paul quickly ran around and shut the door. Gary breathed a sigh of relief. Digger’s welfare was important but there was also the possibility, without the control of his handler, that the dog could hurt another police member. Enough cops had shed blood this day.

  Gary’s chest had taken a huge impact. It turned out that the bullet wound to his wrist was an in-and-out, but the bullet had continued on and hit him in the bulletproof vest. For those seconds when he had seen his blood gushing out to the beat of his heart, he had felt the peril of his situation.

  Gary was finally rushed to hospital, where he demanded to telephone his wife. The protocol was that if an officer was injured in the line of duty, a car would be sent to his house to pick up his wife. ‘It’s okay,’ said the cops at the hospital. ‘We’ve sent someone to get her.’

  ‘No! I need to talk to Lorna myself.’ Gary knew his wife would panic if cops knocked on their door in the pre-dawn hours.

  Finally, the hospital brought over a phone. It was around 5 a.m. when Gary listened as his sleepy wife answered his call. ‘I’m ringing to tell you I’ve been shot, but I’m okay,’ Gary told her in as calm a voice as he could muster. ‘I won’t be home this morning, but I’m okay.’

  Well, he’s obviously alive, Lorna thought as the message slowly sank in.

  By the time the police car arrived at their remote country farm, Lorna had organised her parents to come and get the kids. Since the first shootings happened after Lorna had retired for the night, she hadn’t heard any news about what had happened. The police officers who picked her up filled her in on the way to the hospital. What upset Lorna the most was when she realised that the gunman had meant to do it. When Gary had first called her, she had assumed the shooting had been some sort of accident; the thought that a man had aimed a gun at her husband and pulled the trigger chilled her to the bone.

  At the hospital, Lorna was relieved when she saw Gary was okay. Gary decided that Lorna was the best person to get Digger out of the police car, which had been parked in the hospital car park; no one else would touch him. Before an audience, Lorna called Digger out of the car and into another handler’s van to be driven home. Once back at the family farm, Digger was okay. He had a bowl of dinner and a run and a play, and he was as happy as Larry.

  Meanwhile, the police had finally gotten their search warrant and had found a cache of weapons at Max Clark’s home. Along with a submachine gun and a number of high-powered handguns, they had found 7000 rounds of ammunition. The media quickly dubbed Clark ‘Mad Max’.

  In the days after the shooting of the four police officers, the news was full of the search for Mad Max. It was thought that he spent the first three days hiding in the roof of an empty flat in the area, and police suspected that he might have friends helping him. Max Clark’s own family made tearful televised appeals for him to give himself up. They described him as a good worker, a loving father and a great family man.

  To the police officers hunting him, he was a dangerous psycho­-path.

  Over the next weeks, police raided any house where they thought Mad Max Clark might be hiding. Police intel uncovered a blonde woman who had reportedly been seen with someone who fitted Max Clark’s description. She was identified as Clark’s girlfriend. The two had gone on the run, and the blonde woman had watched while Clark practised his shooting on targets in heavy bushland. Police arrested her and charged her as an accessory after the fact.

  Three months after the shootings, when the leads had dried up, the government posted a $50 000 reward. If Clark was being harboured by friends in the criminal world, police hoped there was no honour among thieves.

  In February 1986 an informer told police that a heavily disguised Max Clark was living in the town of Wallan, 45 kilometres north of Melbourne. Police kept a property under surveillance until a man thought to be Max Clark drove away from it in a white panel van. The hunt for the gunman was about to c
ome to an end.

  Detective Sergeant John Kapetanovski and Detective Senior Constable Rod MacDonald intercepted Clark and pulled him over. Both officers armed themselves with shotguns before getting out of the car. They approached the bearded driver of the white panel van – one officer on each side.

  John Kapetanovski could see the man in the side mirror. He hardly had time to register as the man pointed a gun out the window, straight at him. The first shot hit him in the chest. He instinctively raised his hand, and the second shot hit him there and then grazed the top of his eyebrow. While Mad Max was shooting his partner, Rod MacDonald approached from the passenger side and fired at the gunman. Clark shot MacDonald in the chest. As Clark sped away, MacDonald continued to fire his shotgun at the vehicle, hoping that one of his shots would put an end to Mad Max.

  The two wounded police officers struggled to their car and drove off to get help at a neighbouring house. MacDonald was able to run in to phone for an ambulance. Kapetanovski was too badly injured to move.

  Police and ambulances raced to the scene. The police helicopter spotted tyre tracks heading off the road into a paddock. SOG operatives approached the vehicle with caution and saw a man slumped in the driver’s seat. He had no pulse. The hunt for Mad Max was over.

  When Gary and Lorna Morrell heard that Max Clark was dead, they were both relieved it was all over. In a way, the madman got his just deserts; he had lived by the sword and died by the sword.

  Gary had several operations in the months following the shooting, but the damage to his nerves didn’t heal. He burnt his hand badly while heating steel in a forge, and because of the lack of feeling he didn’t even realise it until he took his glove off to have lunch later in the day. He went back to hospital. Then a break to his finger. Back to hospital. And then a golden staph infection sent him back again. It took a year to recover.

  Digger also had a twelve-month hiatus, and the tough police dog became the family’s pet. But even as Gary was recuperating, he kept up Digger’s training. Sometimes he would go to the squad, and other times, handlers would come up to the farm and do exercises in the scrub around Gary’s grazing cattle.

  Being regularly included while he was on sick leave helped Gary’s recovery. He also had time to reflect on what he had overcome. The case of Mad Max showed the peril that dog handlers could face when their dogs led them straight into the fray. Handlers – especially siege dog handlers like Gary – attended so many crimes when they were still volatile.

  Gary understood that the bullet had changed something in him. He realised how valuable life was, and how he could never take it for granted. He and Lorna decided to take a family holiday each year – something they had never found the time for up until then.

  The day before Gary returned to work, Lorna got his police boots out to polish them. As soon as Digger smelt the polish, he went berserk. The dog had a whine like a siren and he whined for the whole afternoon. He knew they were both going back to work. Gary felt more than ready to go back, but it was Lorna who found herself nervous for the first time ever about her husband’s safety. She made him ring her often from work, and he always had to let her know if he was going to be late home.

  Gary worked with Digger for another three years before the dog retired at ten years of age.

  ❖

  GARY’S TRAINING TIPS

  Always get down to a dog’s level and be sincere. The dog will know it and respond to it.

  Put time into your dog; walk them every day. A fit dog is a healthy dog.

  Never underestimate a dog’s understanding. Their potential is extraordinary; Gary estimates that we haven’t even tapped 10 per cent of their ability.

  Dogs are very black-and-white. A quick message and a quick reward does the trick.

  Start training from day one.

  These highly-trained dogs are all business when it’s needed, but most enjoy a good play once the job is done. Photo courtesy of Christopher Chan

  CHAPTER 4

  On the track of escaped criminals

  As a police dog handler, you spend countless hours training the dog to be the best they possibly can be. There are nights where you are tired or it’s cold or raining and you think to yourself, I’ll just let it go tonight, but you really do need to put the effort in because that training can mean the difference between coming home from work or not coming home.

  – Sergeant Trevor Berryman (Dog Squad)

  In 1988 police officer Trevor Berryman had been in the force for seven years, mostly working general duties in Prahran. For a couple of years, Trevor had volunteered as a police puppy walker. Police puppy walkers cared for a German shepherd pup for around ten months, and the Berryman family were on their third police puppy. Over time they had received regular visits from members of the Dog Squad, who gave them instructions on how best to socialise and develop the puppies in their care. Components of the puppy-walking program included walking the potential police pups at all times of the day and night, and introducing them to as many different environments as possible. The puppies needed to get used to being in different places: shopping centres, police stations, bushland, the beach. As the pups needed to be socialised, each police puppy quickly became part of Trevor’s family – that is, until they had to be handed back to the squad.

  So when a vacancy at the Dog Squad came up, Trevor jumped at the chance. What attracted him to the squad was the thought of catching offenders even if they didn’t leave behind typical evidence such as DNA or fingerprints. Dogs didn’t need such forensic evidence. They worked on scent and scent alone.

  Trevor was chosen from around forty applicants. After many years in the squad, he can look back with hindsight and see that he ticked all the boxes. He was young and fit, and he had a good operational background. Dog Squad members worked one-up – which meant they were on their own with their dogs – so they had to have their wits about them.

  As soon as he accepted the position, Trevor was given his first dog: a long-haired shepherd called Boss. The dog lasted just twelve months in the squad, because he had a growing aversion to slippery floors. This condition is not uncommon in dogs, but what began as a mild annoyance grew to be so bad that Trevor was un­able to search buildings with slippery floors or even lino. Trevor and one of the trainers at the squad worked on the problem; they tried several tactics to help the dog overcome his fear, but he continued to balk at slippery floors.

  Boss was retired and given to a police officer who was looking for a pet. While Trevor was disappointed, he was a little relieved too; handlers and their dogs had to be fit and ready for any situation. It was embarrassing that Boss couldn’t complete some jobs simply because they involved a slippery floor.

  In the Dog Squad, there was never much time to lament the loss of an old dog before a new dog arrived. For Trevor, the new one was a short-haired German shepherd called Shamus. Right from the beginning, every exercise that Shamus did showed that he had far greater skill than Boss. Shamus was a natural police dog; he had perfect obedience, and his desire to track and search was extraordinary.

  On Friday, 12 March 1993, Trevor attended a job that turned out to be one of the most dangerous of his career. He had worked till 4 a.m., and had only grabbed a couple of hours of sleep before getting a call-out at 9 a.m.

  On the previous Sunday, dangerous criminals Peter Gibb and Archie Butterly had escaped from the Melbourne Remand Centre. What made front-page news all week was the fact that Gibb and Butterly had been aided in their escape by prison officer Heather Parker, who had fallen for the dubious charms of Peter Gibb; her beau had prior convictions for manslaughter and armed robbery. The two had begun a relationship when Gibb was held in the Melbourne Remand Centre and Parker worked there as a prison officer. When prison colleagues noticed the growing intimacy between the guard and the crook, Heather Parker was transferred. Undeterred, she visited Gibb in prison and smuggled in a small piece of explosive, which Gibb and Butterly used to blow out a window. The two escaped by climbing
down knotted bed sheets to La Trobe Street below, where they met Heather Parker in a get­away car loaded with firearms.

  The escape was not smooth sailing. Archie Butterly fell during the climb from the window and injured his ankle. Then their get­away car was pursued by a quick-thinking prison officer who hailed a taxi to follow them. They crashed the getaway car, stole a motorcycle, and then crashed that too. Butterly sustained internal injuries in the collision and needed medical attention. The escapees were stalled again by a police divisional van on Southbank Boulevard. A shootout followed, and Senior Constable Warren Treloar was gunned down. As Treloar lay on the ground with serious bullet wounds in his chest and arm, the escapees stole his police revolver, jumped into the police divisional van and fled the scene.

  A statewide alert was issued, and every police officer in Victoria was on the lookout for the fugitives. And so was the public. Not long after the police shooting, Gibb and Butterly were seen getting into a car, which was later found to belong to Heather Parker. Parker and the two fugitives made a brief stop at the Latrobe Regional Hospital so that Butterly could be treated for his injuries.

  They next surfaced on Wednesday, 10 March, at the old Gaffneys Creek Hotel near Jamieson, where Parker and Gibb had a meal in the pub before retiring. By the next morning, the Gaffneys Creek Hotel was a smouldering ruin and the three fugitives had vanished. Butterly was well known for torching stolen vehicles; it was suspected that the escapees had torched the room they’d stayed in to destroy any evidence that they had been there. The fire had spread through the whole pub.

  When questioned by police, locals recognised the fugitives’ pictures. It was thought that they were still in the local area. And that was where the police dogs came in.

  When Trevor Berryman got the call, his brief was to make his way to Jamieson and work with officers from the Special Operations Group to locate Parker, Gibb and Butterly. Another handler, John Murray, and his dog Rebel joined Trevor and Shamus as they systematically searched farmhouses and outbuildings around the area. Given that the fugitives had showed no hesitation in gunning down police officers, the dog handlers wore ballistic vests. It wasn’t as nerve-racking as it might sound; the heavily armed SOG operatives at their backs, and the nose of the dog at the front, made the job a little easier. And there was no time for any trepidation; the handlers had to give the dogs their total concentration. The smallest shift in behaviour could signal that the dog had sensed something, so the handlers had to be able to read the subtleties of these alerts. Sometimes it would be a slight difference in pull on the tracking line, or a raise of the head. Shamus was a head raiser.