Chambers County Canine Program Potential Unleashed

Most of our canine program we try to fund out of our asset forfeiture fund.  That is the money that ultimately is recovered from drug operations, whether it be from interdiction of the highway or some other form of assets that the sheriff's office ends up seizing or ultimately being forfeited through the district court system where it becomes an asset to us and we use some of those funds to maintain or canine program.  As the sheriff, I try to be really careful about how I use the tax dollars, what I call the general fund money that comes over.  We really try to focus it on law enforcement operations that the taxpayers fully expect.  They don't necessarily expect us to be buying dogs and feeding dogs with it, so I quite often try to use asset forfeiture money.  Not saying that the general fund doesn't help support the canine program, because it does, but we try to get the bulk of it elsewhere.  That's why we're very careful when we purchase dogs, we try to purchase them through the Shane Detwiler Foundation or some other means, versus using our general fund from tax dollars.   

The dogs go through an unbelievable amount of training, I mean months and months before they ever come to us.  We then send the canine handler, that's been selected to handle that particular canine, to school with the dog.  Most of the schools we've been using are all out of state, so I would say that probably a dog does not become particularly useful, fully trained, and out in the field for about a year and a half to almost two years.  Just our handling training where we send the handler to train with the dog will run anywhere from six to eight weeks.  They'll be training with the dog wherever they are, whether in Ohio, or Louisiana, or whatever canine program we’ve selected to get the dog from.  Like I said, I think we initially invest about two years into a dog before he becomes effective.   That's really a short window because the sad part is they're working dogs, and it's pretty intense, the work that they do, so you usually start wearing a dog out, so to speak.  They usually age out at about eight or nine years of age, so you only get about six or seven working years out of them.  We've had a lot of transitions over the past six years where we've had dogs that aged out.   

"Each training location has its own unique set of techniques for choosing what to train a particular dog for," explained Sheriff Hawthorne.  "They take the dogs as puppies and try to identify what their skill seems to be, whether the dog always uses its nose and follows a trail, or whether he's a dog that's sitting there and smells something and immediately goes to it, that would be a drug trafficking dog.  The one who puts his nose to the ground and follows a scent would be a tracking dog.  They literally start that as puppies and there's different techniques they use to see whether the dog has those types of skills. Some of the dogs we've had over the years are what you would call "washed out" dogs; they've washed out of a program.  What I mean about washed-out is there's something about the dog that was a flaw.  A couple of the dogs we've gotten were from Lackland Air Force Base.  They came out of the military world, and they were either bomb dogs, or search dogs, or what have you.  One of the dogs we had was one of my favorites.  He washed out of their program because he was a breed that had a tendency to want to point, like a hunting dog, a pointer.  Bomb or drug detection dogs, when they find what they're looking for, just sit down and stare at it.  This dog had a wonderful nose and ninety percent of the time, he'd find what he was looking for, but then he'd point instead of sit.  They told me his flaw and asked if that was going to be a problem.  I told them, as long as he gives us what we're looking for, I don't care if he points or sits.   We got him and he ended up being one of our most successful dogs.  He ultimately ended up with a disease and is no longer with us, but he was a terrific dog. So, even a washed-up dog can be a fantastic asset and tool for the sheriff's office," Hawthorne noted with a smile.  

"The dogs that we have at the sheriff's office are dual purpose dogs.  They do drugs and tracking.  We also call them bite dogs.  We do our best to let the criminal know we're turning the dog loose, because when the dog finds them and knows that’s the criminal he’s looking for, he will bite him.  He knows if it's the criminal he's looking for because we've given him his scent, often by putting him in the car where the fella was driving and he catches his scent.  Sometimes they're not smart enough to give up before we turn the dog loose, and the dog is just doing what he's been trained to do, and that's apprehending the criminal. Some of those apprehensions are very meaningful.  Other things, from a sheriff's perspective, I've been really pleased with is the canine's ability to sniff out drugs and money.  Criminals oftentimes will hide the money and the drugs in the same place.  Also, money has a very specific smell to it.  When you have money that's been handled from drug operations and drug deals, that drug scent also ends up on the money.  So, often the dogs will sniff out what they believe is drugs and the search reveals its actually money, that's pretty common.  Some of those searches have revealed very large amounts of cash.  There are various processes in the criminal justice system by which the person who's carrying all this money has the ability to justify to the courts and justify to the IRS why they have all this money.  Under normal circumstances, we have found they cannot justify to us or the IRS why they are carrying this large amount of cash and usually it ends up being drug asset forfeiture money." 

"For me, from a sheriff's perspective, the most rewarding aspect of the canine program has been the overall management of the program.  There is not a better feeling for a sheriff than when he hears a deputy ask if there is a canine available and dispatch comes back and tells him there is a canine available, and he is enroute.  Then, thirty or forty minutes later you hear the success of whatever it was, whether it was trying to search a building, or apprehending a burglar, or trying to find someone who has fled from a traffic stop, or that they found narcotics in the car.  It's very fulfilling to me that the money, and time, and effort we've put into this program over the last say twenty years, has paid off.  It is a financial asset that in some form or fashion, the taxpayers pay for.  If you're sheriff, and you want to run a very proficient and professional operation, you want to make sure the money and time and effort you put forward that the taxpayers support you doing, actually pays off and it works.  That's probably the most important thing to me." 

"On the flip side of that, I will also tell you there is nothing better to make a kid light up at the school when a canine handler brings a dog for a demonstration, that's a very nice thing to see.  People don't get into law enforcement like they used to, ever since some social events that have taken place, law enforcement has really struggled in their recruiting.  Probably one of the best recruiting tools we have is our four-legged officers.  The kids and the young people of all ages, from kindergarten to high school, love the canines, so we routinely use them for our recruiting program. 

Interstate 10 is a major drug corridor; I think one of the main reasons our county is so safe is that we have a lot of proactive officers.  Criminals don't want to come over this way because they know we like to do our job and work hard over here.  Sigma is a dual-purpose dog; I think he would be okay around children, but I keep a close eye on him because ultimately, at the end of the day, he's still a dog.  We have two other dogs at home, and he gets along with them really well.  He just lays around and relaxes, he's pretty social.  

Blitz and I have had a fair amount of interesting successes.  One of my favorite stories to tell people about is the night we got a call that two guys were breaking into a house in Baytown.  When I get there, it's only me and Blitz and I'm still waiting on my other two units to show up.  I give my canine announcement to come out and surrender or Blitz is going to come find you, you're under arrest.  As soon as Blitz and I enter the property, I hear one of the other officers on the radio telling me to come towards the road.  I go back to the road and see these two guys there that are about to take off running from my backup deputies.  I let them know they better stop running, or Blitz is going to get out there and bite them.   I promise you, they both stopped dead in their tracks, looked at each other, looked at Blitz, then put their hands in the air and laid right down on the ground.  They didn't want any part of Blitz going after them.  We arrested them for breaking and entering and later got notified that they used the jail phone and called one of their buddies that kind of colluded with them on breaking into the house.   You hear them talking on the jail phone, "Yeah, man, I was just about to take off running from the deputies, I could have outrun every single one of them, but then they said that they had that canine and I knew I couldn't outrun him, so I just gave up right there.  This goes back to what I was saying about the force multiplier, there's plenty of two-legged officers there but when there's a four-legged one, everybody starts acting a little better than they would have.  There's a t-shirt I like to wear, it says, 'Go ahead and run, my canine likes fast food," laughed deputy Coats.     

"I helped one of our units on a traffic stop where they had reasonable suspicion to run Bama. Bama alerted the car and we got a small amount of narcotics out of it along with just shy of $80,000.  It was pretty awesome to be able to seize that," declared Sergeant Bingman.   I love the fact that with Bama, I always have a partner there with me."