At the end of August, an alleged car-stealing, home-breaking ACT duo were brought to heel by two police dogs.
It’s not the first time such canines have earned local attention.
“Senior Constable Blue Dog 342” was your typical Australian Blue Heeler and from the late 1970s became something of a Canberra celebrity.
Wandering into the Water Police HQ on the southern shore of Lake Burley Griffin, Blue Dog was adopted as mascot - even sporting a peaked cap - though not making the grade as a trained recruit
It was 1983 before two-year-old German Shepherd, Senior Constable “Kaiser”, became the ACT’s first official badge-holder of this nature (and yes, they are issued with ID).
Primary responsibilities involved working with the “Bomb Data Centre” - archival photos revealing duties including scoping out the National Tally Room.
The NSW Police had established the first Australian “K9 Squad” for “searches, rescues and apprehending offenders” in 1932.
One of its two first recruits was "Tess". The case that made the German Shepherd famous came on Christmas Day, 1937. In what was described in the book The Cold Nose of the Law as "unequalled in police dog records the world over", Tess tracked down a missing murder victim, six-year-old Marcia Hayes - and her killer.
However, despite this and other successes, the K9 Squad was disbanded in 1954, not re-instigated until 1979.
Fast-forward to 1992 and in a stoush between two ACT politicians on public perception around the use of detection dogs and their effectiveness, it was suggested “police dogs had been used rarely in Canberra”.
On the contrary, over almost a decade, the local “Dog Squad” - apparently a name also given to the AFP’s surveillance unit in the mid-1980s - received numerous mentions.
Sniffing out drugs at music festivals, hunting down car thieves in Stromlo Forest, searching for missing people - including a 46-year-old ANU physicist in 1989, tragically found drowned in the Lake - and trying to track a balaclava-clad attacker who broke into a young girl’s Kambah bedroom in 1990.
The following year, the Squad was being praised for searching out two suspected armed robbers in bushland near the western Canberra district of Belconnen.
Apparently, such an on-hand resource would have been a welcome addition even earlier.
In September 1962, “Australia’s top tracking dog, Dawn”, of the Commonwealth Police Tracking Station in South Australia, was flown into the ACT to assist with the search for a missing boy.
The seven-year-old German Shepherd had earned a widespread reputation in 1959 for helping track down Long Bay Gaol escapee and murderer Kevin Simmonds. On the run for 37 days, Simmonds “became an object of fascination during his weeks of freedom”.
Eight-year-old Nicky Summers had wandered off “in rugged country at the headwaters of Gudgenby River, 30 miles south-west of Canberra”, considered “some of the toughest in Australia”.
After two nights in “near-freezing temperatures” and having covered almost seven miles, the blonde-haired, worn-out little wanderer was successfully located.
At the RAAF Base, Fairbairn, set between the Canberra airport and the Fairbairn Pine Forest, trained patrol dogs had been enlisted as military members since at least 1963. Complete with recorded names and service numbers, one of the early intake for Canberra was PD - Police Dog - 379 Noro.
Attached to the “Security Guard Unit”, a June 27, 1968, “Canberra Times” article confirmed their primary role: “They guard RAAF stations by night”.
They could though, also be employed when it came to local crimes. One example was the 1977 attempted murder of the Indian Military Attache to Australia, Colonel Iqbal Singh.
Subjected to deep stab wounds, the diplomat fought off the attacker, who made his get-away. “Two RAAF tracker dogs were brought to the scene” and given the scent from a duffle bag left behind - though “unable to locate any trackable leads”.
It was November 19, 1993, when the first graduates emerged from a newly established ACT dog training complex.
Come 2007, a National K9 Centre opened at Majura. As the AFP’s key training facility in this regard, 14-month-old puppies are set on the path to learn to “detect drugs, money, firearms, and explosives.”
General Purpose - GP - dogs are also used in searching for offenders and missing persons, tracking from last known locations and uncovering evidence.
Most recently, “technology detection dogs” are specifically trained to sniff out the likes of USBs and SIM cards.
While more widely known, highly trained Human Remains Detection or, cadaver dogs, are currently only formally attached to the NSW Police and since 2006, the Queensland Police. They are supplemented by trained and accredited volunteer groups dedicated to similar pursuits.
Back in the days of Senior Constables Kaiser and Blue Dog, it seems the former proved a little too toothy with his fellow officers to continue in his duties (well, it’s stressful work).
Blue Dog though, remained on guard until the end, suspicious of anyone not in uniform and while keen on a boat ride, harbouring a “dislike of police diving wetsuits”.
The last shift ended on December 9, 1983. The plucky Heeler’s final place of rest was on the waterfront close by the Water Police flagpole.
* You can hear more about the work of police dogs in NSW and the ACT in my podcast Capital Crime Files: "Case File Fragments V".