It is now an established practice within various government agencies to deploy suitably trained dogs to locate and indicate the presence of the scent of controlled substances on people.

Tayside Police Dog Section now have two handlers and dogs, Constable Graeme Hunter with Beth, a two year old black Labrador and Constable Rory Duncan with Tilly, a sixteen month old liver and white Springer Spaniel fully trained and equipped to do both active drugs searches and body scanning.

It is not a new discipline for the Force with Constable Lindsay Williams and her dog Fudge trained back in 2004.  However, in 2010 handlers and their dogs are now trained in a new, more up to date way, which allows more flexibility and requires fewer resources to operate successfully.

In their capacity as body scanning dogs, Beth and Tilly are trained to detect Cocaine, Crack Cocaine, Heroin, Amphetamine Sulphate, MDMA (Ecstasy), Cannabis Resin and Herbal Cannabis.

As active search dogs Beth and Tilly mainly facilitate searches of houses and vehicles and in this capacity are also trained to detect cash and weapons.

Beth and Tilly were officially licensed as active drugs dogs on 12 February 2010 and already both have had operational success, recovering both drugs and cash during a recent drugs operation in Perthshire.

Constable Ron Anderson, Force Dog Instructor, explained how body scanning works. He said,

‘’Body scanning is achieved by training the dog to scan the air around an individual in a non intrusive fashion and give a trained, passive response to indicate the presence of such a substance.  In other words, the dog will “sit” directly in front of the subject, indicating the presence of an illicit substance.

 

‘’Our aim is to meet the ever increasing demands for the assistance in the detection of dangerous drugs distributed and used throughout theUK.

 

‘’As an Instructor, it was a discipline that I was well aware of but I had only delivered occasional refresher training to Constable Williams. Previously she was the only drugs dog handler trained in this discipline and for this skill to work effectively in planned operations two dogs are required. This means that one dog works for a period of up to 15 minutes, while the other rests and they then swap over. The handler not working a dog acts as a spotter for the handler who is working their dog.

 

‘’On this occasion, in order to successfully deliver quality initial and refresher training, the Force engaged the assistance of Wilf Carr, ex dog instructor at Durham Constabulary Dog Training School and Pete Mullings, operational dog sergeant, specialising in body scanning, also from Durham Constabulary to visit and teach Constable Steve Ritchie, my fellow Force Dog Instructor and I, the techniques involved. This we did by training both Constables Hunter and Duncan and Beth and Tilly for the initial four days of the course, under Wilf and Pete’s guidance and I then carried on to the conclusion of the course.

 

‘’Body scanning was primarily used for checking static people, mainly in nightclub queues, as part of an operation. Now they have a wider ranging remit and are able to scan both static and moving subjects as well as seated subjects, which opens up more possibilities in terms of drugs searching. They can still scan nightclub and public house queues but can also check people within such establishments and other public areas such as shopping centres, railway stations, airports and baggage. It is still expected that most of the work the dogs will do will be pre-planned but it does open up possibilities for the handlers to be proactive in this field also.’’

Body scanning training has been carried out at live venues such as Kangaroo Storage in Dundee, St John’s Shopping Centre in Perth, Wellgate and Overgate Shopping Centres in Dundee and Dundee airport.

At the end of two weeks training both Beth and Tilly were tested by PC Gavin Forsyth, Police Dog Instructor from Grampian Police, and duly passed with flying colours.

Constable Anderson added,

‘’It is a new and exciting role for Tayside Police Dog Section and one which I fully expect to be successful in the future combat against drugs.’’