| Posted By: | < > |
| Posted Date: | February 12, 2003 (10:13 AM) |
Message:
PROPER PROTOCOL FOR ALERTS AND INTEREST
When evidence or human remains are not visible but we have reason to suspect a dog has located something, our first action should be to report our findings to the canine team leader.
Call your team leader, have them meet you in the field to talk, go to another radio channel, or have your helper go and tell the team leader that you have interest or an alert. This should be done without alerting other teams or agency members of what is going on. It is up to the team leader to contact the requesting agency to inform them of the situation. The canine team leader makes the decision which team will go into the area to re-check or confirm the alert. The team leader has knowledge of all the teams and knows how different dogs work. At this point the agency might want to observe the second dog working the area. The reasons we want to keep the dogs interest or alert confidential until the appropriate time is; the next dog team to check the area may be influenced by your talking about it, if other handlers think someone has made the find they may not adequately cover the area they are searching.
The Canine team Leader has the responsibility of educating the agency on how our dogs work, interpreting interest or alerts, and explaining how we work more than one dog in an area of interest. Having a team approach rather than a single person make the call, gives us more accuracy in finding something. It also takes the pressure off one person and makes it a team decision to commit to an alert. By committing to an alert the agency will spend lots of man hours and/or money, depending on how deep the burial is. It is always a big decision to tell the agency we believe we have a buried body. This is where the team leader is most helpful. They have been on searches where finds have been made and understand the importance of making a commitment.
FALSE ALERT
False Alert or Not Knowing?
Experienced handlers have all had their dog alert or show interest in an area that, as far as we can tell, has no forensic evidence, decomposition scent, or anything we have taught the dog to find. We call this a false alert, but sometimes simply we don't know what the dog has alerted on. On a very few occasions we find out at a later date that our dog was alerting on the correct scent, but at the time we did not have all the evidence and knowledge to understand. Most of the time we won't understand why the dog did what it did. We must just learn to accept that. One of the hardest decisions to make is whether the alert is correct or not.