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Bloodhounds
The Alameda Police Department Bloodhound Program came about in
an unusual way. It began when I (Officer Jeff Schettler) watched
the exploits of a bloodhound, Yogi, and his handler, Officer Jerry
Nichols of the Aurora (Colorado) Police Department, on television.
Yogi tracked down a young girl three days after her abduction. While
the outcome was tragic, I was amazed at the time (three days) and
distance (fourteen miles) it took for Yogi to find the girl. I wondered
why such a valuable police tool was so infrequently used. So began
an educational experience that brings me to the present and to my
own police bloodhound, Ronin.
With my initial research, I discovered that very few agencies use
bloodhounds. Other than Search and Rescue, there were no such programs
in California, and very few programs throughout the country. Learning
of the Maryland-based National Police Bloodhound Association, I
met with some of the top bloodhound people around the country.
Knowing that my department would be skeptical of the idea, my goal
was to demonstrate benefits of using bloodhounds in an urban environment.
After all, when people think of bloodhounds, they envision the movie
"Cool Hand Luke" with a handler and hound running through
the swamps!
We begin…
On my own time, I bought Ronin, a bloodhound puppy, from a breeder
in Susanville, California, and began apprenticeship training with
Officer Kathy "Kat" Albrecht from the University of California
at Santa Cruz Police Department. Kat owned and ran two bloodhounds
for her local Search and Rescue Program under the Santa Cruz County
Sheriff’s Office. Later, Ronin and I worked under the tutelage
of Glenn Rimby, a retired Major from the Kansas Department of Corrections,
and attended schools in New Mexico, Kansas, Texas and Wyoming.
After about a year of extensive training, Ronin began working real
cases, primarily for Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department,
under Officer Mike Edwards. While the cases were relatively few,
and typically involved missing persons, Ronin had some early successes.
His first was a woman who had been missing for several days in Gilroy.
Ronin found her in about an hour. His success generated immediate
interest from other local agencies and his caseload increased dramatically.
After these first successes, I approached my department about a
bloodhound program. The program and its concepts were viewed favorably
by the staff and the city, and Ronin and I were awarded a one-year
trial contract with the possibility for an extension, should the
program prove effective.
The nose knows….
The program was considerably different from normal Patrol Service
Dog contracts. Bloodhounds are a passive find resource and are not
normally trained for protection. In other words, they don’t
bite the person they're looking for. This opened a realm of search
opportunities not normally encountered by traditional police K-9
handlers, such as missing children and Alzheimer patients. Furthermore,
bloodhounds are known for their ability to follow long, old trails.
Bloodhounds also scent discriminate. Scent discrimination is the
ability to pick a person out based on his or her own unique scent,
similar to DNA or a fingerprint. From a purely investigative standpoint,
a bloodhound could help retrace the footsteps of a criminal before,
during and after the commission of a crime.
Ronin worked his first official case in November 1997 for the Alameda
Police Department. During opening hours, two armed suspects robbed
the Great Western Bank on Park Street. The first suspect was quickly
caught by a patrol in the area, but the second suspect was nowhere
to be found. Witnesses spotted the second suspect's handgun a block
away. Ronin was called in about four hours later and was scented
on the handgun. After searching for 45 minutes, Ronin found the
suspect hiding in an apartment complex crawl space.
In 1998, an unknown person abandoned a newborn baby in a cardboard
box in the back of an apartment building. Several hours after the
baby was taken to the hospital, Ronin was scented on the box. Ronin
trailed the scent to a nearby apartment complex and found the suspect’s
apartment and birth bedroom. The suspect was in custody within hours.
Things happened rapidly at this point, and my partner became an
instant highlight for our community! Ronin worked more than 150
cases in California, North Carolina, Georgia, New Mexico and Kansas
and has "caught" 17 people. His successes in producing
crucial evidence in many of his other cases resulted in a renewed
contract for three more years. The goal of the initial program was
to demonstrate the use of bloodhounds as a police tool to aid in
the recovery of missing or at risk persons and to put criminals
behind bars. Ronin demonstrated this well.
Ronin was the first bloodhound to work full-time in a patrol capacity
for a municipal police department in the State of California. The
program has also had a significant impact on other communities and
on the state as a whole. Currently, bloodhounds are either already
in operation or are being trained for use in the Oakland, San Leandro,
Long Beach, and Irvine police departments and the Riverside County
Sheriff’s Department.
In 1999, the Alameda Police Department sponsored the first Police
Bloodhound Trailing School certified by the California Commission
on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST). Held in April, the
training school received over 100 students from around the country
and from as far away as Italy. The second Trailing School, held
in October of the same year, was designed to familiarize standard
patrol K-9’s with this unique principal of training to aid
in their work. Both schools were very successful. Our hope is to
see the school continue and advance as more departments recognize
this truly wonderful resource.
For additional information:
Agency website: Alameda
Police Department
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