The Dog Squad

by Vikki Petraitis

  The dog also listened for the signs that it was time to go to work. Mick always turned on his police radio before he left home for an update about the jobs of the day. As soon as Flynn heard the radio, he would stand impatiently, pawing at the garage door. The rattle of the lead had the same effect. Flynn could also tell the difference between when Mick stopped the car to let him go to the toilet, and when they stopped at a job. He could read the vibe.

  In one early job, a couple of local police had executed a warrant at a suspect’s house, but the guy had run off. Mick arrived and tracked the guy to a construction site. It was a house build, nearing the lock-up stage. The dog scratched at a tiny manhole – too small for a man to hide in. Mick thought it could be a cat that had momentarily sparked Flynn’s attention. They did another circuit and the dog indicated again at the manhole. Mick doubted him for a moment, but then told the local cops that he was going down under the house.

  Mick opened the manhole and let Flynn go through it on the lead. Mick followed him in, crawling on his stomach. It was much easier going for the dog than for his handler. Flynn barked his head off; his excitement level meant that it was a crook, not a cat, that was under the house.

  Dodging pipes and holding the torch and the wildly barking dog, Mick spotted the crook up ahead. He tried to yell at him to stop, but he couldn’t make himself heard over the barking. Finally, Mick was able to crawl close enough to the man to yell at him to crawl back to the manhole. There was one problem though. The crook was too scared to come back past the dog.

  In the confined space, Mick wiped his eyes and inadvertently rubbed dirt in them. He tried his best to negotiate with the crook to manoeuvre past them. After a lot of wriggling and crawling through the detritus of a building site, they all made the slow crawl back to the manhole.

  Mick had to be careful. Crawling too close to Flynn invited the possibility that the dog could snap his head around and bite Mick in the face. It seemed to take forever to crawl out, and when he finally emerged into the sunlight, Mick looked a little like a mud man. Flynn would need a good brushing later at the squad to get the dirt and cobwebs out of his coat. Mick was relieved to hand the crook over to the waiting police officers and head back to the squad to take a shower.

  If any dog could help Mick appreciate the power of a good police dog, it was Flynn. The dog also gave his handler the opportunity to understand what it was like to be on the receiving end of a police dog bite.

  A lot of handlers get bitten by their own dogs, mostly in the heat of battling with a crook. That is exactly what happened to Mick after being called to an aggravated burglary in Tottenham. The offender had escaped, and Flynn had picked up a track and led Mick down a couple of suburban streets, then up a driveway beside a block of flats. The dog tracked around to the back of the flats, and stopped at the door of what looked like a shared laundry.

  Mick turned the handle. The door was unlocked, and he pushed it. There was some give but then the door slammed shut. Mick pushed again, but it felt like someone was pushing it shut from the other side. Meanwhile, Flynn was going crazy. Other police members who had followed Mick and Flynn stood back a little. A very excited Flynn barked his head off and snapped at any of them who came too close.

  Mick kicked at the door with enough force to push it open for a fraction longer. He caught a glimpse of a man who fit the description of the burglar. The door pushed shut again. Using more force, Mick aimed a kick that smashed a panel, revealing the crook behind the jagged hole in the door. The burglar raised his hands to give himself up and Mick kicked again at the door to open it wide enough to gain access. With a slight miscalculation in balance, Mick’s kicking foot slipped on the door, momentarily making him lose his balance. At the same moment, Flynn lunged forward in the direction of the crook. In the excitement, the dog sunk his enormous teeth into his handler’s calf muscle. Mick felt a bolt of pain as the teeth punctured his leg.

  Realising his mistake, Flynn let go straight away and returned his focus to the crook. Ignoring his pain, Mick called the offender out, then stepped back to let the locals make the arrest. He could feel blood running down his leg and was almost too afraid to look at the damage. He had seen his dog bite people before and had seen him do damage – but that was when crooks fought back. One quick in-and-out bite wouldn’t be as bad as that – he hoped.

  Taking a deep breath, Mick took a quick look at his leg and saw a couple of puncture wounds, deep enough to expose the fat layer beneath. This crook capture was followed by a trip to the doctor, some butterfly stitches and a tetanus shot. To this day, Mick still bears the scars of that bite. Parts of the skin on his calf are numb where Flynn’s bite affected his nerves.

  Calf scars notwithstanding, Flynn proved to be a good biter and a good tracker, and he was judged perfect for critical incident dog work. That meant that he would be called in when things got dangerous.

  Things got potentially dangerous on one of Flynn’s first jobs on the critical incident team – that is, things got dangerous for the other team members. On these jobs, Mick would ride in the back seat of a four-wheel drive with Flynn on his lap. Mick jumped into the back seat and called Flynn up. The dog took a leap and landed on Mick’s lap, and Mick shut the door. All of a sudden, Flynn went wild and bit the headrest of the seat in front of him. The dog whipped his head around and tried to bite the hapless police officer in the other back passenger seat.

  It took a couple of seconds for Mick to realise that he had jammed Flynn’s tail in the door. He scrambled to open the door, but Flynn’s butt was in the way. Not only that, in his frenzy the dog had activated the auto-lock. Mick yelled to the guys in the front to unlock the door from the central console and he finally got the door open.

  Once his tail was in the clear, Flynn settled down. He even wagged his tail to show that no harm had been done. After that, Mick was forever careful to make sure Flynn’s tail was well and truly through the door before he shut it.

  On one occasion, Mick thought he lost Flynn when the two were doing a track in high grass along a river. Flynn was on his 10-metre tracking line and Mick could feel the dog, rather than see him, in the long grass. He knew he was there because of the tension on the line.

  And then, suddenly, the line went slack. Mick thought Flynn must have slipped his harness somehow. He called the dog but got nothing. Still holding the tracking line, Mick started to reel it in. A couple of metres in, the line went taut again.

  Mick jogged forward, keeping the line tight as he wound it in. He stopped suddenly at the edge of a big dirt hole by the riverbank. Reeling his dog in like a fish, Mick saw two paws and a nose appear at the rim of the hole. Flynn had fallen in. He was fine; he just needed a little help getting out again.

  But if Flynn occasionally needed Mick’s help to get him out of strife, on other occasions he would remind his handler just how strong he was in his own right. While pursuing a crook in a chase near Moorabbin Airport, Mick boosted Flynn over a chain-link fence and then tried to scale it himself. The fence collapsed under him and Mick fell flat on the ground. Before he had the chance to get to his feet, Flynn had taken off after the crook. As soon as the long tracking line went taut, Mick found himself being dragged along the ground. He reckons it took around 30 metres of being dragged along by the awesome power of his dog before he could scramble to his feet and continue the pursuit upright.

  The incident really brought home just how strong the dog was and how strong his desire to catch crooks was. Nothing would stop him when he was in full swing.

  Working in siege situations has its dangers. As all dog handlers know, this kind of work can be high-risk for both them and their dogs. Flynn has been on the receiving end of quite a few attacks. But a few offenders have found, to their detriment, just how dangerous it is to fight back when being apprehended by a police dog.

  Flynn took down one offender at a railway station by biting him on the ankle. The guy was big and angry; he sat up and started punching Flynn in the head. F
lynn retaliated by biting the arm that punched him. When the dog locked onto that arm, the man started hitting him with the other. By the time Mick subdued the offender and called off the dog, the man had suffered some significant injuries. Flynn, on the other hand, seemed fine.

  Another time, Mick and Flynn had joined in the pursuit of a man who had escaped after ramming a police car on a busy highway. He’d jumped from his wrecked car and run across eight lanes of traffic before disappearing into the adjoining bushland.

  Flynn tracked the man for a couple of kilometres before leading Mick to a clump of bushes. Flynn raised his head and air-scented; the man was close and his scent was filling the area. Flynn barked at the bushes. ‘Come out!’ yelled Mick.

  In a flash, the man ran from the bush and kicked Flynn. He tore off to a nearby fence and tried to scale it. Flynn gave chase, and Mick wasn’t far behind. The man punched the dog and wrestled him into a headlock. He didn’t realise that, at the same time, the dog was biting his ankle.

  The man was quickly wrestled to the ground and arrested by local cops. A search of his pockets revealed a quantity of the drug ice. It explained a lot. Police officers are dealing with ice addicts in increasing numbers, and one of the symptoms of the drug is that users have a much higher pain threshold. This guy was so busy trying to attack the dog, he didn’t even register that Flynn was biting him. Mick got a clear look at the man, and he could see that he had a druggie look about him; he was gaunt and twitchy. All the arresting cops knew that if he didn’t get off the drug soon, the man, who looked to be in his mid-thirties, wouldn’t make forty.

  Flynn’s most recent bites have been ice addicts. The higher pain tolerance matched with an increased bravado makes for a dangerous mix. They will often try and take on the police dogs.

  Every take-down in such circumstances is entered into police records. These records tell a sad and destructive story: possession of small amounts, theft, assault and often death. Most police working the streets of Melbourne have seen attractive young people, new to the drug, become gaunt and sunken-eyed over the course of eighteen months. And every cop knows these addicts will not make old bones.

  Another guy who may not make old bones, but on account of stupidity rather than ice, was being chased by Flynn through a school yard. He kept looking over his shoulder and yelling ‘Oklahoma!’ When Mick finally caught him, he asked why he was yelling ‘Oklahoma’ at the dog. The man explained that he had seen it in a Jackass movie. Johnny Knoxville was chased and attacked by a dog and the call-off word was Oklahoma. The guy was very disappointed at the misinformation in the movie.

  He wasn’t the only offender to yell ‘Oklahoma!’ at a police dog. It is yet another myth about police dogs that handlers encounter occasionally. The truth is that even if someone did know the call-off word, a police dog wouldn’t listen. They only listen to their handlers. Even another handler might be ignored. Where Flynn was concerned, as he got more experienced he knew when to bite and when to let go, often without any commands at all.

  Not all dog handler jobs end in someone getting bitten. Mick estimates that only around a handful of every 100 jobs ends in a bite. When confronted with the frenzied barking of an excited police dog, most people come quietly.

  In one case, there was no chance the offender was going to come quietly. Police were trying to capture a dangerous crook who was wanted for a long list of aggravated burglaries. On his latest job the thief had broken into a house, found the keys to a bronze BMW worth around $100 000, and then driven off in the car. When the owners reported the break-in and the missing BMW, D-24 told all patrol cars to keep a look out for it.

  A local patrol had spotted the car parked in a side street in Prahran. The burglar was obviously tired after his long night of breaking into houses, and had pulled over for a nap. As the crook snatched his forty winks, police surrounded the car.

  One officer crept up and tried to open the driver’s side door, and the man woke up. In a swift movement, he started the car, shoved the gearstick into drive and lurched forward – straight into the police car strategically parked in front of him.

  Mick and Flynn had positioned themselves on the passenger side, between the stolen car and the brick wall of a factory. Mick watched in amazement as the crook reversed the car and smashed into the police car behind him. The guy was like a maniac. He lurched forward again and rammed the car in front, then reversed again. The car mounted the footpath and each back-and-forward ramming move reduced the space between Mick and the wall.

  I’m in a bit of strife here, thought Mick. If the guy continued on the same trajectory, a couple more back and forths and he’d be pinning Mick and Flynn against the wall – or worse. While the guy was doing his concertina act with the stolen BMW, other cops on the scene had used their batons to smash the driver’s side window and had sprayed the man with capsicum spray.

  Mick could see that one more back and forth would crush him. He timed his move, and the next time the man drove forward, Mick and Flynn dashed behind the car and over to the other side to safety.

  By this time, Flynn was wild with excitement. Mick scrambled around to the driver’s side and then picked up his dog and pushed him through the window. In training, Flynn had not deployed well through car windows. But this time, there was no hesitation. The German shepherd through the window distracted the man long enough for Mick to reach through the window and turn the car off. He pulled the keys from the ignition and threw them clear of the car.

  The guy yelled that he gave up, and Mick called the dog off. He pulled Flynn back out through the window and kept him safely away from the action while the cops dragged the man out of the car. Once clear, the man jumped up and started fighting again, and Flynn was again deployed to take him down. Once the man was safely on the ground, Flynn released him and the arresting officers did their job.

  Mick moved the dog right back to let him calm down. As his own adrenaline rush wore off, Mick could feel a stinging in his arm; he had cut it on the broken glass lifting Flynn in or out of the window. Mick examined Flynn for injuries and checked his paws to make sure he didn’t have any glass stuck in them. Flynn had been protected by his fur coat and had fared better than his handler.

  All of the police officers on the scene surveyed the damage: the rammed BMW and the police vehicles that would need a trip to the panel beater. Leaving the scene, Flynn had a strut to his walk as he always did when he walked away from a good arrest. He curled his tail upwards and held his head high. Mick was proud of his dog.

  The age of social media has heralded a new problem for the modern police force. Parties being gate-crashed is not a new phenomenon, but because of instant online notifications, the number of people who turn up to ruin the fun is. Huge crowds – sometimes 3000 people – can show up at a residential house. The person throwing the party will often keep the crowds from entering the house, but problems occur when the would-be partygoers gather in the street and form an impromptu mob. When the police show up, it’s common for the mob to pelt them with bottles.

  There was one party in Melton that Mick and Flynn got called to. As Mick could see, two warring groups had begun to fight. Once the police arrived, both sides turned on them. Flynn yelped when he got hit on the leg with an egg. Mick got hit with eggs too. It was when the bottles started flying that the police retreated to wait for backup. When backup arrived, Mick and Flynn helped clear the street and calm everything down.

  Police dogs have the ability to move these kinds of crowds on relatively quickly. Three or four dogs will be used to stand between the crowd and other police officers performing arrests. On such occasions, Mick holds Flynn on a really short lead because the dog gets very excited. Even so, he is enough to keep crowds at bay.

  It doesn’t stop the bravado though. Many yell out things like: ‘I’ll punch your dog’ or ‘I’ll bite your dog’. Police dog handlers have to maintain a professional stoicism because such events are witnessed by many and filmed on camera phones. Whenever a
mob gathers or a protest occurs, there are almost as many cameras as participants. Everyone seems to be waiting for a rise out of the police. But every police officer at the scene knows that if they react they will more than likely headline on the evening news. To combat this, the police media film these events too, so that they have the countering point of view.

  Mick reckons that one of the most potentially violent situations that he has been in was during the Occupy Melbourne riots in the city. Police had cordoned off an area of City Square with wire fencing to keep the crowds at bay. Inside the area, they placed four handlers and their dogs. Mick and Flynn were part of the team.

  After a quiet hour, the protestors arrived at the city square and surrounded the fence. They started shaking it and rattling it. Mick estimated the crowd to be a couple of thousand people. Verbal abuse started flying towards the cops – words that would make a sailor blush.

  Mick and his fellow handlers stood with their dogs and didn’t react. If the phone cameras in raised hands were anything to go by, this incident was being recorded by hundreds of people. The worst part for the men and women from the Dog Squad, who stand guard over the city at times like this, is that they just have to cop the abuse. Even the most peaceful protests can be infiltrated by violent ring-ins who will yell incendiary things to try and get a reaction from police. While the handlers can’t react, the dogs get very excited. They feed off the crowd and off each other and have a great time barking at everybody.