Bark for Backup : Police Canines Show Their ‘Ruff’ and Gentle Sides as They Do The Duty of Protecting and Serving

Fearsome toothed avengers or soft cuddly puppies--the image of police canines seems to vary depending on which side of the law you stand.

And the officers who handle the dogs like to keep it that way.

“They have a tremendous psychological effect on people,” said Lt. Dave Inglis, who heads the Ventura Police Department’s canine program. Inglis conducts weekly training for most of the police dogs used in the county.

“Actually, most people just give up when they hear we’re going to send in a dog,” he added.

Sgt. Al Moussa, a deputy with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department and former dog handler, used an old ruse recently when chasing a group of teens suspected of breaking into Newbury Park High School.

The teens were getting away, and even though he didn’t have a dog with him, Moussa yelled that they should stop or he was going to sic his dog on them. Then he started barking. The youths quickly gave up.

“Every handler knows that trick,” Moussa said.

Police dogs have a reputation for fierceness and courage, but in Ventura County, at least, they seldom have to bite anyone, said Inglis.

And along with their police work, the dogs are used for a tremendous amount of public relations work, at local schools and community events.

“They can go into a school and will let the kids pull on their ears, pet them, mob them,” said Inglis, known as the guru of canine programs in the county because of his training programs. “We pick the dogs for their temperament. They are not vicious, but highly trained.”

There is also a tremendous amount of community affection for the dogs.

In Simi Valley, a group of residents set up a Friends of the K-9 group that has raised money to pay for the newest dog. A community group in Santa Paula raised enough money to buy that Police Department two dogs. And similar groups are being formed in Thousand Oaks and Ventura.

“People really love them,” Inglis said.

Police canines have become a fixture in each of the five city police departments in the county, as well as in the Sheriff’s Department.

Port Hueneme was the first department in the county to use police dogs, in the early 1970s, said Lt. Fernando Estrella, who worked for more than eight years with a dog named Ekko.

“He was the best partner I ever had,” Estrella said.

The Oxnard Police Department followed, and now has four dogs, and the rest of the county soon joined in.

The highly trained dogs--mostly German shepherds and Belgium Malinois--are bred and trained in Europe initially and then brought to kennels in the United States from which departments purchase them.

A well-bred and trained dog can cost from $9,000 to $12,000. The price also covers one month of training with the officer who eventually will become the dog’s handler.

It is a critical time for the dog and officer, said Inglis, because the dog must bond with the officer.

When an officer is hooked up with a canine, the dog--most of the dogs are male because they are cheaper than females--and officer are together constantly. The officer takes the dog home with him and is with him 24 hours a day.

Handlers said that the bond is so tight that a dog will give its life for his owner.

Ventura Police Officer Doug Driver said soon after getting his dog, Aldo, 2 1/2 years ago, he was attacked by a huge man wielding a broken bottle.

The man slashed Driver’s arm and then stabbed Aldo, but despite his injuries, Aldo kept at the man and helped to knock him to the ground.

“He just didn’t give up,” Driver said.

For each dog, the department has to spend about $4,000 to refurbish a patrol car or roughly $30,000 for a new car from which the back seat is removed and replaced with a padded platform on which the dog rides.

The officer, dog and patrol car are referred to as a canine unit and are used for everything from sniffing out drugs and rooting out suspects to the public relations work at schools.

Despite the apparent popularity of the dogs in the community, police officials say canines nevertheless have negatives to overcome.

“I think we’re still trying to overcome the image of these dogs being turned loose on civil rights demonstrators in the 1960s,” Inglis said.

In the 1980s there was a flood of excessive-force claims filed in Los Angeles by suspects bitten by police dogs there.

Lawyers representing those clients have complained that police dogs are used as tools for punishment or end up doing what cops know they can’t do.

But in Ventura County, the number of complaints filed has never been large, officials said.

All law enforcement agencies in the county except Oxnard come together for weekly training at a new obstacle course for the dogs near the Camarillo Airport.

The dogs are put through an intense five hours of drills each week, Inglis said. They are trained to “find and bark” but will bite if a suspect threatens a handler or tries to run away.

“We train that hard because we want what I like to call a totally controlled dog--one that makes no independent decisions,” Inglis said. “That way you can’t blame the dog, because it is working on commands made by the handler.”

The Ventura County Sheriff’s Department and the Port Hueneme Police Department have not had a claim filed in the last 12 months, and the Ventura Police Department has not had a complaint filed because of a dog bite since 1994. The Santa Paula Police Department has never had a claim filed for a dog bite.

Inglis said he can only remember one complaint in the last 10 years in which the city of Ventura had to pay.

One complaint was filed against the Oxnard Police Department in January, and the Simi Valley Police Department has not had one in at least the last three years, city officials said.

“We’ve had a couple over the years, but we haven’t been deluged by complaints, that’s for sure,” said Lt. Don Austin, who heads Simi Valley’s four-dog canine unit.

“And the reason is our dogs are so well-trained and in control,” Austin said. “I think Bodo, our newest dog, was with us for over a year before he had to bite anyone.”

Last year, one of the Simi Valley dogs was actually bitten by a suspect, Austin said.

“The guy had committed some sort of felony and was hiding in his house and wouldn’t come out, so we sent in one of the dogs,” he said. “He found the guy and started barking like he is supposed to, and the guy just started biting him.”

The man was arrested and was eventually charged with assaulting a police dog, among other things, Austin said.

Both the Ventura and Simi Valley police departments have developed canine programs that have consistently won state and national police competitions.

Simi Valley Officer Sterling Johnson and his dog, Atlas, won titles at the World Police and Fire Games two years in a row, 1989 and 1990.

And Ventura Officer Driver and Aldo have won several top awards in canine competitions in Bakersfield and Redondo Beach.

Inglis said that dogs are probably most valuable in searches for either drugs or people.

A German shepherd has a sense of smell 150 times that of a human. They have been able to find drugs buried underground and sealed behind plaster walls, and find people hidden where officers could never find them.

Inglis said the Ventura Police Department once used 12 officers for eight hours to search a local department store for a burglary suspect. That same search would take two dogs and four officers about two hours.

Ventura Police Officer Quinn Fenwick said he is constantly surprised by his dog and partner, Lado.

Earlier this year, Fenwick said he was trying to break up a loud party and was talking to a group of drunks outside when they knocked him to the ground and started beating him.

Lado, who was in the patrol car, saw that Fenwick was in trouble and leaped out the car window.

“He started barking and showing teeth, and the situation quieted down real fast,” Fenwick said.

But Fenwick said he has no problem letting his children, ages 2 and 4, play with Lado.

“I don’t think Lado has had to bite anyone for over a year,” Fenwick said. “I take him home and my kids tug on his tail and push him over. At home he’s a big baby.”