The force has added to its ranks police dogs Tweed and Rob. Tweed, a 19-month-old springer spaniel and Rob, a 20-month old black Labrador, are the first police dogs in the UK, and the only dogs outside of the USA, to be trained to detect digital storage devices such as portable memory sticks.
Chief superintendent Jim Nye, commander for the Alliance Operations department, said: ‘This is a historic step for the Alliance and policing in the UK. These dogs will give the police a new way to fight the threat of terrorism, paedophiles and fraudsters.’
In May 2015, police constable Graham Attwood, who is a police dog instructor for the force, began to research the ability to train such a dog. PC Attwood identified that the first dogs in the world to train in digital storage detection were trained at the Pioneering Connecticut State Police Dog unit, in the USA.
Following his collaboration with Connecticut State police and FBI, a pilot scheme was started in December 2016.
PC Attwood, said: ‘Myself and members of the alliance dog school, initially handled and trained Tweed and Rob, mainly in our own time, as we were committed to our usual daily duties of training the forces other operational police dogs.
‘The majority of the dogs we have in the force either come from our puppy breeding scheme or are gift or rescue dogs, but this was a unique challenge for us as so we identified and purchased Tweed and Rob last December when they were around 15 months old, and embarked on this journey with them.’
Recently retired Connecticut State Police Dog Instructor and co-founder of the American programme, Mike Real, along with Special Agent Jeffrey Calandra, who is the only digital detection dog handler in the FBI, were invited to Devon for a week in March 2016 to train with and assess Tweed and Rob.
This formed part of an independent review of the ability of the dogs to detect digital storage devices, at the Alliance Police dog school at Middlemoor, Exeter. Under the watchful eyes of the visiting officers from the United States the dogs were put through their paces, in a three-day assessment process of the dogs’ operational search abilities. Tweed and Rob passed with flying colours.
Special agent Jeffrey Calandra commented: ‘In today’s tech-driven world, crime has no state or even country boundaries, so helping our law-enforcement partners around the world develop cutting edge detection capabilities is key to fighting crime and terror.’
PC Attwood said: ‘Our digital dogs have already proven to be a success and have been used in over 50 warrants executed across the UK, including Hampshire, Essex, South Wales, and North Yorkshire.’
Rob and Tweed are part of a trial, and the force will assess the success of these dogs and their new skills at the end of the 2017 with a view to rolling this out wider. The dogs live at home with their new full time police dog handlers, PC Martin King and PC Jill Curnow.
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