Canines Unsung Heroes in Airport Drug Bust

Newspaper photographers clicked away as law enforcement officers proudly held their firearms in front of the mountain of cocaine they had just seized.

Television crews lugged heavy equipment and elbowed their way toward the U.S. customs pilots in green flight suits.

Meanwhile, Sultan Vom Lorscher Rathaus quietly sat in the hangar. He didn’t care about the fame associated with participating in one of the largest drug busts in Ventura County.

All he wanted was his belly scratched.

“I think I was more excited about all the commotion than Sultan was,” said Santa Paula Police Agent Jimmy Fogata, referring to his German shepherd, the department’s senior K-9 dog that sniffed out the drugs hidden in the Cessna’s cockpit.

Sultan is being hailed as one of the unsung heroes of Wednesday’s drug seizure at Santa Paula Airport. U.S. Customs Service agents seized nearly 600 pounds of cocaine and arrested Daniel Wesley Allen after he ran out of gas and was forced to land at the small airport.

“The doggies deserve some credit,” said Mike Fleming, a U.S. customs spokesman. “They’re invaluable law enforcement tools. Take some Alpo out to them for us.”

The 3-year-old pooch jumped into action when his highly sensitive snout detected the illegal powder, paving the way for officers to make the discovery.

Later, a younger K-9 dog, Axle, was brought in to assist Sultan. Axle was being neutered on Thursday, and his handler, Agent Joey de los Reyes, was caring for him at the veterinarian’s office.

After a job well done, Sultan was living anything but a dog’s life.

“Last night Sultan got a big steak,” Fogata said. “Today, he got to hang out at the swimming pool. It was his day off.”

Debbie and David Inglis trained Sultan and Axle. The couple own the Inglis Pet Hotel in Oxnard, one of two agencies in the county that train German shepherds to become law enforcement hounds.

David Inglis said while Sultan is loving and affectionate, he and other K-9 dogs are trained to attack on command. Besides narcotics, they are instructed to trace the scents of people.

“Their sense of smell is phenomenal,” Fleming said. “They should be given credit, but don’t forget the guys who find the targets in the first place. They’re not as zippy as the pilots, so when it comes to recognition, they’re often forgotten.”

Riverside houses the only U.S. customs radar operation in the country. On Wednesday morning, a veteran radar agent and a trainee at the agency, situated at March Air Reserve Base, noticed a suspicious blip on their radar screen. The aircraft was traveling through a well-known smuggling route near Jacumba in San Diego County.

The customs agents, who do not release their names for safety reasons, alerted DEA officials in San Diego, who began trailing the plane. The agents were also responsible for coordinating the efforts of Santa Paula police officials.

“Yesterday was a textbook run,” said Jeff Houlihan, a supervising radar officer in Riverside. “I couldn’t have written a better scenario. Everything was perfect.”