The Dog Squad

by Vikki Petraitis

  The police found nothing on the first day of the search. The two handlers checked into a local motel around midnight, while the dogs stayed in the cars.

  Back on deck at 6 a.m., the team of police officers pushed through their exhaustion and continued searching. Local police had set up roadblocks and checkpoints around the area and were handing out flyers with descriptions of the fugitives. Around midday, a local man approached one of the checkpoints and reported that when he was fishing in the Goulburn River nearby, he had seen a car parked off-road with a camouflage net over it.

  While John Murray and Rebel continued searching outbuildings, Trevor and Shamus went with the SOG to the camouflaged car. If the car belonged to the escapees and was camouflaged rather than abandoned, there was a likelihood that they would return to it. And if they did, police could be hiding close by.

  From the car, Trevor cast Shamus on his 10-metre tracking line to see if he could pick up a scent. Nose to the ground, Shamus sniffed around and quickly alerted. ‘He’s got a track,’ Trevor told the two SOG operatives. It was the first time during the search that police had been close.

  The bush was dense, and tangled prickly blackberry bushes added to the challenge. But while Trevor and the two SOG officers battled their way through, a very excited Shamus powered ahead, tail wagging. The dog loved a search; to him it was all a big fun game. ‘Good boy! Good boy!’ Trevor encouraged Shamus as the dog pushed on.

  They followed the scent for around half a kilometre before Shamus suddenly stopped in a small clearing surrounded by dense bush. The dog raised his head.

  ‘He’s got something,’ Trevor said in a quiet voice.

  One of the SOG members moved in front of Trevor and Shamus, and one stayed behind. Part of their job now was to protect the handler and his dog. And, more importantly, their big black Steyr semi-automatic rifles were much more powerful than Trevor’s police-issue handgun.

  Then all hell broke loose in a hail of bullets. The fugitives were firing on them!

  An old colleague had once told Trevor: ‘If anyone ever shoots at you, just move.’ Remembering the sage advice, Trevor picked up Shamus and dived into the closest bush. The blackberry prickles didn’t even register as the police officer huddled with his dog. Under gunfire, he quickly went over his tactical options. He could stay put and keep Shamus with him, or send the dog to try and take down the offenders. The second option was dubious under the circumstances because if he released Shamus with an order to take down the shooters, the dog wouldn’t differentiate between the SOG members returning fire and the fugitives. Unless directed towards a particular person, police dogs will take down anyone in range.

  The three police officers were well and truly under fire – so close, in fact, that Trevor could hear the sonic cracks of the gunfire breaking the sound barrier. Trevor had lost sight of the SOG officers; he worried that they might have been taken down in the original burst of gunfire. He couldn’t see them because the gunfire had filled the air with thick smoke. The earthy eucalyptus smell of the bush had been replaced with the acrid smell of gun powder.

  It would only have been a couple of minutes since Trevor dived into the blackberry bush with Shamus, but it felt a lot longer. Then he heard the low voice of one of the SOG officers. ‘I’ve been shot in the leg,’ he said matter-of-factly.

  ‘Are you still good to continue?’ said the second SOG bloke, appearing from behind a tree, dripping wet. He had emptied his magazine in the return fire, then jumped into the river to reload underwater, out of firing range.

  ‘Yep.’

  Not long after it began, the hail of bullets stopped; the officers could hear shouting further down the river. Shamus was as excited as a pup, tail wagging madly. In training, a gunshot signalled play. He thought he was going to catch some crooks and he was very happy about it, but Trevor held on to him.

  Regular police radios were useless in the thick bush, but the SOG had internal communications and they were able to call for backup. Trevor and his colleagues got the report that the head of the SOG, Bruce Knight, had arrested Heather Parker and Peter Gibb. Archie Butterly wasn’t with them.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ one of the SOG guys told Trevor.

  For the next half-hour Trevor and Shamus remained in the blackberry thicket while heavily armed SOG members swarmed the area to search for Butterly. Until he was found, the threat was very real; he could come up from anywhere and ambush the searchers.

  After the immediate area around Trevor was cleared, an SOG operative pointed to Shamus. ‘Can we use him to find Butterly?’ he asked.

  Trevor explained that Shamus could do it if he was kept on the lead – there were too many people around with guns for the excited police dog. Trevor would have to take Shamus right into the area where the SOG thought Butterly was hiding. With much manoeuvring over spiky blackberry bushes, Trevor and Shamus scrambled to higher ground, making their way cautiously to where the gunfire had originated. Trevor let the dog out on the 10-metre line. After a few moments, Shamus alerted – there was someone in nearby bushes.

  ‘There’s someone here,’ Trevor told the SOG.

  The dog was excited. It was his turn. This was what he had trained for. Once the nod was given for the dog to go for it, Trevor issued the command. The handler dropped the tracking line and Shamus took off like a shot, disappearing into the bush to face whatever lay behind it. The bush moved and rustled. ‘Good boy! Good boy!’ Trevor called.

  Shamus growled, which meant he had located someone. But while there was a lot of growling, which would be accompanied by biting, there was no human sound.

  Trevor recalled the dog, and he came leaping out of the bush. Trevor could see a significant amount of blood on Shamus’s honey-coloured chest. He knew it didn’t belong to Shamus because the dog was bounding around, happy as a clam.

  ‘He’s in there and he’s either dead or very badly injured,’ Trevor told the waiting SOG. Trevor gave Shamus lots of pats and praise, then cautiously checked his dog for injuries – just in case.

  While the SOG officers closed in, Trevor and Shamus withdrew; their work was done. In a culvert, the SOG found Archie Butterly dead – a single gunshot wound to the head. Beside him lay the stolen police revolver. While police combed the scene for evidence, Trevor returned to Jamieson Police Station to hose the blood off his dog. The exhausted handler was offered a ride back to Melbourne on the police helicopter, and Shamus and Trevor, strapped into harnesses, made it home in half the time it would have taken them to drive. A couple of beers at the pub later on and that was about it.

  Heather Parker and Peter Gibb both received ten-year prison sentences for their crimes. Parker’s sentence was reduced by half on appeal. Trevor and the two SOG officers received awards for their involvement in the search, and Shamus got his picture in the newspaper. The lady who had donated Shamus saw the picture and sent Trevor a beautiful letter saying how proud she was.

   Dear Senior Constable Berryman,

  It was with pride and delight that I read in the morning paper what a good police dog Shamus is – as I am the person who gave Shamus to the Dog Squad.

  He must be a fine looking dog now – as he will be 7 this year. I have only seen him once since I gave him to the Dog Squad. His first handler brought him to see me at the hospital where I worked and where Shamus, as a pup, spent a lot of time. That was great. I really would love to see him again, but I understand that he is a police dog, but I still do think of him as my dog!

  One favour I would ask is a photo of him. I was promised and promised a photo and never received one. I feel a little bit let down over that. Anyway, I’m so glad he’s turned out tops. He was a lovely pup and young dog.

  All the best and keep safe,

  (Miss) Margaret O’Malley

  Trevor and Shamus made the 90-minute drive east of Melbourne to Moe and spent the day with the elderly woman, much to her delight.

  TREVOR’S TRAINING TIPS

  Never let a mistake pass;
if a dog makes a mistake, correct it immediately.

  Don’t make training too hard; make sure it is within the dog’s capabilities, relevant to its experience.

  CHAPTER 5

  A police dog catches a cat burglar

  Senior Constable Harry Boniwell had worked general duties at Frankston for a couple of years when he met a police dog handler called Steve Smith, who worked his dog around the Frankston area. When the two would cross paths on jobs or at the station, Harry would listen to stories about working with the highly trained police dogs. Harry had always had dogs growing up and felt an affinity with them. To him, the Dog Squad sounded ideal.

  When a couple of vacancies at the Dog Squad came up in the early 1990s, Harry applied and was accepted for a two-day trial of sorts. Thirty applicants were put through their paces, and observers judged how they worked as a team, how they demonstrated a good work ethic and, most importantly, how they interacted with the dogs. At the end of the two days, Harry was among four officers selected to train with the squad. Three would make it through to a permanent position.

  Harry’s first impression of Ruger, a big German shepherd, was not altogether positive; he reckoned the dog had mad eyes. While other dogs didn’t often make eye contact, Ruger would stare directly into the eyes of whoever he was looking at. A family had donated the dog to the squad; they felt he was too much for them. Ruger was a bit of a Houdini; he kept escaping from his family’s backyard. Ironically, when one of the trainers from the Dog Squad had gone to visit Ruger’s family to do an assessment on the dog’s potential, he had driven past a German shepherd wandering along the road. The trainer wondered whether that might be the dog he was coming to see. Sure enough, when he got to the house, the family found that Ruger had escaped yet again from the backyard. Ruger’s escaping was perhaps a symptom of boredom; the trainer knew from experience that once a dog was kept exercised, well trained, and busy, it lost the desire to escape.

  When Ruger was allocated to Harry, there was some trep­idation on Harry’s part. Ruger was a very strong-willed dog, and right from the get-go Harry knew he had to keep him firmly under control. Of course, Ruger pushed the boundaries in those early days, and it took all of Harry’s training to channel the dog’s energies into good police work. Ruger was also quite aggressive, which meant that Harry could never let him off the tracking line. If anyone walked past Harry’s house, the dog would bark its head off. One young neighbour who jumped Harry’s fence to retrieve his football fled just in time to escape the snapping jaws of the police dog.

  But traits that are not suitable in family pets can make for good police dogs. Ruger was not afraid of anything and, if correctly channelled, his desire to track, bite and search could be put to good use.

  Harry had been working with Ruger for over two years when he got called to a job in January 1995. In midsummer, the trusting people of an affluent tree-lined street in Toorak had fallen asleep with their upstairs windows open to catch the breeze after a hot spell. The last thing on their minds was the possibility that a cat burglar might steal his way into their homes and pilfer their belongings as they slept.

  At around 5 a.m., a scared young man had called the police to report a break-in at his house. Harry and Ruger got the job shortly afterwards.

  At the scene, the young man – who was a little drunk after a night out with his mates – described how he had entered his house without turning on any lights because he didn’t want to wake his family upstairs. As he made his way to the toilet, he tripped over something and stumbled. On his hands and knees, he’d noticed a sneaker under the floor-length curtain of a nearby window. He reached out for it, but it wouldn’t budge. The sneaker belonged to a man dressed in black, who darted out from behind the curtain and was gone in a flash.

  Some police had gone off in search of the cat burglar, who had taken jewellery from the home, while others checked neighbouring homes for signs of a break-in. It turned out that four other houses had been burgled as well.

  At that stage, they had no idea which direction the intruder had taken, or what he looked like. Harry harnessed Ruger, attached the 10-metre tracking line and cast the dog across the rear yard in the hope that the cat burglar had gone out that way. Ruger ran around in a semicircle but didn’t pick up a scent. Heading down the side path towards the front, the dog suddenly stopped and began sniffing enthusiastically; he had picked up a scent. Nose to the ground, the dog led his handler to a nearby house and sniffed excitedly at the side fence. Ruger jumped up and hooked his front paws on the top of the fence; then he scrambled up and over, landing in the backyard on the other side in full hunt mode. Harry followed the dog over the fence, and Ruger tracked across the yard and jumped over the next fence. So did Harry.

  In this yard, Ruger’s behaviour changed; he ran around frantically, sniffing the air. There was a bungalow in the backyard, its door wide open. Ruger let out a low growl and ran into the bungalow. Harry assumed Ruger had the cat burglar cornered, but the dog reappeared seconds later. He seemed to be saying, ‘He was here a minute ago – I know he was!’ Then he picked up the scent again and dragged Harry across the yard, straight to the back door of the house. Ruger sniffed at the door handle with great excitement.

  At that moment Harry and Ruger were joined by Andy Adams, another dog handler. Andy and Harry looked at each other and knew instinctively that the dog’s interest in the back door meant the cat burglar was probably inside. Harry was incredulous; even though the burglar had been caught in the act he had broken into another house – his fifth for the night.

  Andy crept around to guard the front door of the large house, while Harry and Ruger stayed at the back, in the shadow of a big tree. Harry radioed for reinforcements. He had noticed a long bank of windows at the side of the house. They needed officers to cover all exits.

  Harry only had to wait a couple of minutes before a man casually opened the back door, had a quick look around, and stepped out. The man looked so casual, in fact, that Harry wondered if he might be the owner of the house. Perhaps he had been out to his bungalow and back, and Ruger had picked up his scent. Given the uncertainty, Harry stepped into the man’s view and introduced himself.

  ‘What are you doing in my backyard? Are you looking for someone?’ asked the man.

  Ruger began barking loudly and, in the light, Harry could see the man was dressed in classic burglar attire: black beanie and black jacket. There was even a pair of black gloves poking out of one jacket pocket, and the point of a screwdriver poking out of the other.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I’m looking for you,’ Harry said, making a lunge for the cat burglar and letting Ruger go at the same time.

  The man was agile and quick, and leapt back into the house before Harry or the dog could nab him. The police officer heard the clicking of the lock. Ruger barked wildly at the door.

  Around the front, Andy saw the burglar through the front window at the same time as the burglar saw him. The man quickly changed direction, seeking an escape route that didn’t have a policeman standing in front of it. He disappeared into what looked like a lounge room on the ground floor.

  Andy rang the front doorbell over and over until a sleepy couple came downstairs and let him in. He explained the situation, and the husband went to the back door to let Harry and Ruger in. The two police officers directed the couple back upstairs and told them to wait on the landing, out of the way, while they headed into the lounge room.

  By this time, Ruger was beside himself. Even though the two handlers couldn’t see the burglar, the dog knew exactly where he was and barked ferociously at a huge white leather couch that butted up against the front window. The wily cat burglar had wedged himself behind the couch, where the dog couldn’t reach him. Ruger could still smell him though, so hiding was useless.

  The dog jumped up on the couch, growling and salivating. ‘Come out and show your hands,’ Harry yelled, ‘or the dog is coming in!’

  There was no response; it was time to send in the
dog. However, what Harry didn’t realise was that if the dog couldn’t get to the burglar over the couch, he might try and go through the couch.

  Which was exactly what he did.

  From their vantage point on the stairs, the pyjama-clad couple watched a very excited German shepherd take a bite out of the arm of their leather sofa. Suddenly, leather strips were flying and the air filled with fluffy floating cotton. The adjacent fancy curtains didn’t come off well either.

  The cat burglar could feel the demolition of the couch and must have figured he was next. ‘I give up!’ he yelled.

  Harry called off the dog, and the burglar crawled out from behind the couch and stood up with his hands in the air. Looking at what used to be a lovely white leather couch and nice floor-to-ceiling curtains, Harry could only wish that the burglar had given himself up a little sooner. Luckily, the couple were simply relieved that the police had apprehended the man who had broken into their home. And since Harry didn’t hear anything from the couple afterwards, he assumed the damage was claimed on their home insurance. Harry could only wonder at what the claim form must have looked like: ‘One minute the couch was fine, and the next minute a police dog appeared . . .’