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Man’s best friend, and rightly so

PETER BUFFA

It’s understandable. These days, people worry about things blowing

up. Like Wednesday, when the offices of the Daily Pilot got blown up.

Not the paper’s real offices. Blowing those up is against the law.

We’re talking about the old Daily Pilot offices on West Bay

Street, which are now vacant and soon to be demolished. The building

was used in a joint training exercise last week for SWAT teams from

the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and the Costa Mesa and Newport

Beach police departments.

The teams ran their tactics with the efficiency of an NFL offense,

using special equipment to break down doors and smash through walls

and windows. They went through a number of training scenarios,

wherein pretend terrorists, gunmen and other people of highly

questionable character had to be flushed out, subdued and in some

cases, swatted really good.

Our very own editor, Tony Dodero, was lucky enough to watch the

whole thing. He got to duck, hold his ears and feel his chest go

ka-thump as the police set off flash-bang grenades that use a huge

bang and a bright flash to momentarily stun someone who is behaving

badly.

Dodero said watching his old office and others get seriously

trashed was noisy, exhilarating and a little scary, even when you

knew it was pretend.

Not everyone knew it was just practice though. The police dogs on

the scene were convinced it was the real thing.

I had a few chances to watch Costa Mesa’s K-9 unit at work while I

was still loitering at City Hall. Fascinating stuff.

Creeping around empty places and dark spaces with guns drawn, and

darting from one doorway to another makes for great drama on TV. But

in real life, it’s dangerous and not very efficient.

Never send a man or a woman to do a dog’s job. A trained police

dog can find someone hiding in a pitch-black warehouse or an office

or under a house faster than you can say “fast,” which is fast.

The irony is, they seldom have to. All the handler has to do is

stand by the door, get the dog worked up into a barking, snarling

frenzy, then shout nine magic words: “Either you come out or the dog

comes in.”

If there is someone hiding in there, the magic words always work.

Bad guys are dumb, but they’re not crazy.

We tend to personify everything animals do, but police dogs are

not crime fighters. They’re not trying to solve crimes, they don’t

really care who did what to whom, and they don’t want to make the

world a safer place. They leave all that to us.

They do what they do, which they do very well, because they know

that if they deliver, they will make their handlers happy. And that

means they will get a treat -- could be a snack, or their favorite

toy or just an affectionate word or gesture. That’s it.

A police dog’s attitude is, “I’m sure this guy is a terrible

person, and I’m sorry about man’s inhumanity to man and all that, but

you give me a few minutes with that rawhide bone, dude, and I will

deliver this loser to you on a platter. Now unhook me.”

The idea of using dogs to fight the bad people and, unfortunately

at times, the good people, is not new. People have been using dogs to

protect themselves and attack others for thousands of years. Ancient

armies used trained dogs as sentries and attack dogs in battle as a

matter of course, and invading armies, such as the Romans and the

Conquistadors, used them to terrorize the local people.

Imagine how it must have felt to be attacked by people and weapons

you had never seen before, and be faced with scores of charging,

snarling dogs at the same time. Like today’s crime suspect hiding in

the warehouse, it didn’t take long for the white flag to come out.

Today’s police dogs are descendants of the military canine corps,

which got organized in this country at the start of World War II.

Dogs had been used for a few tasks in World War I, like carrying

messages and supplies. But between 1942 and 1945, thousands of dogs

from a wide variety of breeds were trained to do tasks such as

crawling under barbed wire, locating snipers and detecting mines.

The most decorated U.S. war dog was a German shepherd named Chips,

who served with the 3rd Infantry Division in North Africa, Sicily,

Italy and France.

Think your dog is tough? Please. Chips could kick his butt up and

down the block all day long and well into the night.

When Chips’ unit was pinned down by a machine gun emplacement in

Sicily, Chips jumped up, sprinted across an open field and flew into

the machine gun nest like Rocky the Squirrel, grabbing an enemy

gunner by the throat. The rest of the machine gun crew was so stunned

that they stopped firing and were quickly overrun.

Chips received numerous commendations, including a Purple Heart,

and he even served as a sentry at the Roosevelt-Churchill conference

in Casablanca. Ironically, Chips was from Pleasantville, N.Y., where

he lived out his life after the war.

According to Costa Mesa Senior K-9 officer Mike Cohen, the police

pooch of choice these days is the Belgian Malinois, which looks like

a German Shepherd but is a little smaller, a lot quicker, more sturdy

and more energetic than its German cousin.

Today’s police dogs do it all -- they find people, then subdue

them; they sniff out drugs, explosives, bananas. The Department of

Agriculture’s “sniffer beagles” are always a show stopper at LAX in

their little green vests, hard at work sniffing the bags of

international arrivals for contraband food and plants.

So there you have it. When the going gets tough, the K-9 unit gets

the call. Just be thankful there are people and pups who are willing

to do it. It’s hard enough being a cop, even without four legs and a

wet nose.

I gotta go.

* PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs

Sundays. He may be reached by e-mail at [email protected].

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