LEPS

The effectiveness of the special police units called K9, or canine, in the field of law enforcement will be further analyzed and justified with relevance to their overall integrity. Police have been using dogs in their patrol and investigation forces, including narcotics, SWAT, (tactical), and even homicide to apprehend criminals and detect criminal evidence successfully for over two decades. Since the early 1980’s German Shepherds and various other dog breeds have been used to bring chase and arrest successfully to many criminal suspects (Savage, 1996). Hargreaves (1996) states that Dutch police have been training dog handlers for police departments throughout the world since 1919. The dog handler is a specially trained police officer that must go through intensive additional training with the K9. That is only after applying and being accepted into a special police unit usually after showing strong interest in working with these dogs and already exhibiting excellent proficiency as a patrolman Police K9 are named this because of there protruding sharp teeth located next to the incisor teeth, or “canine tooth”. Although common dogs are sometimes referred to as canine deriving from the same species, a police K9 is much different from your family pet because of the intense training they must undergo. The keen sense of smell that a K9 possesses is what police attune to there work, placing the dogs in a variety functions and working tasks. A K9 has such an acute sense of smell they will most frequently detect substances that are no longer present such as narcotics, guns, and bombs (Green, 2004). A dog’s sense of smell is so much greater than that of a human; we have very little capacity to identify with their capabilities except through the use of working dogs. In fact, a trained K9 dog has a sense of smell that is thousands of times greater than their human police partner (Hargreaves, 1996). Dogs have become more than just pets or protectors of livestock. It