The National Missing Persons Coordination Centre (NMPCC) visited the ACT Dog Team to learn about how their team assist in the search and rescue of missing persons. Courtesy: AFP/NMPCC
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00:00Leading Senior Constable Peter Hockings with the ACT Dog Team, currently working a general
00:09purpose police dog by the name of Rogue.
00:13Been together with Rogue for two years now and we spend pretty much every waking minute
00:19together rolling around in the car.
00:23So in the event of a missing person, the dog team generally has at least one dog on shift
00:29at any one time, including overnight.
00:32We would respond to a missing person in the community by providing, first of all, a set
00:40of eyes for general duties units to assist them in locating the person in the first instance.
00:48In the event that we're required to use a dog to locate and track a person who is missing.
00:56Generally speaking, Canberra is only a small area, so we can be from one side of town to
01:02the other within 20 minutes or so.
01:06The dogs are usually already kitted up ready to go with a collar.
01:10If necessary, we can put a harness on to make it easier to track.
01:15Generally speaking, we are one of the first teams to respond to such an event, especially
01:21if it's a young child or an older elderly member of the community.
01:25We help out whenever we can, makes it a lot easier to locate people with obviously the
01:31more people you have on staff searching.
01:35So we primarily use the dogs because of their olfaction capability.
01:39A dog can smell a lot better than what we can.
01:43They can smell odour.
01:44We obviously can't see it or we can't smell it like they can.
01:48Their capability far exceeds anything that we have in terms of a person's capabilities.
01:56The dog that we train, they are very, very capable of locating odour.
02:03That's primarily what we do.
02:05It's our bread and butter and that's what we focus a lot of our training on.
02:10So the AFP general purpose team currently have five general purpose dogs on staff.
02:15We are capable of deploying within the ACT region, also nationally and internationally
02:19as required.
02:20So when we're out in the field with our general purpose dogs, I take the weather considerations
02:28into account pretty much straight away.
02:30So we're looking for wind direction, speed, things like that.
02:35Obviously the more wind, the more it pushes the odour around.
02:38Also how hot it is, how hot the ground is.
02:42All the air currents come into effect when we're searching.
02:46We need to consider barriers in vegetation and things like that.
02:50If there's a body of water and such things that are going to affect where odour is going
02:57to be located.
02:58Our dogs may not necessarily track and locate odour where the person actually walked, but
03:05the wind may have pushed the odour off to one side.
03:07So that's where the dog will be working when the odour pool is the strongest.
03:13So I work with Rogue.
03:14He's a four-year-old German Shepherd.
03:17He actually came from a family in Queensland and we were lucky enough to purchase this
03:22dog to put on to a 16-week basic course in order to qualify him as a general purpose dog.
03:30Right from the start, this dog displayed an excellent aptitude for tracking and searching.
03:38Amongst other things that we do, we do search open areas, so take the dog off-lead and allow
03:44him to work the way that he sees fit.
03:47So whether he's tracking or air-sensing, he will also locate people in a certain area.
03:55These dogs are trained to apprehend.
03:57They apprehend on command, but also in defence of myself or themselves if they come under
04:03attack.
04:04These dogs are trained to search buildings as well.
04:07We spend a fair bit of time training them to do so, because at the end of the day it's
04:12still odour, whether it's tracking for odour or inside a building.
04:17So the average day, what it looks like for myself, I'm up at 5am.
04:23Generally on day shift, I will go and have a look at the dog, make sure he's okay, check
04:28him over, do a health check, put him in the car and then spend about 20 minutes cleaning
04:34kennels.
04:35From there, once I've logged on to the system, I can see what jobs have occurred overnight
04:40and anything pressing that requires a canine's attention.
04:45We do have an on-call capability, so we'll also see who's been called out if at all overnight
04:52and whether that's any relevance to myself.
04:55From there, generally speaking, I'll spend a few hours travelling around the ACT, just
05:00getting a feel for the day and seeing what's happening.
05:04Some days usually start fairly busy and other days, I don't want to use the Q word, but
05:09they are fairly quiet.
05:11On those days, we might come out to the office, get some paperwork done, we might exercise
05:16the dog, exercise ourselves and then be ready to respond to any kind of jobs that happen
05:23throughout the day in the ACT.
05:25So the type of training that we like to use, in terms of rewards, most of the dogs love
05:31a good game of playing with a ball.
05:34We have Kongs, balls on a rope, things like that.
05:37We also have tug toys for the dogs to play with because they are motivated by fulfilling
05:44certain genetic desires within their brain.
05:47They like to play tug of war and things like that, so we can use that to manipulate their
05:51drives to suit whatever training purposes that we have in that particular session.
05:58So Rogue's favourite activity after a hard day's work is to sit on the couch with the
06:03kids and enjoy a lot of downtime.
06:05He's one of those dogs that has an incredible switch.
06:08When he's at work, he's at work, but when he's at home, he's a family dog first and
06:13foremost.
06:14He enjoys playing on the trampoline with a tennis ball in his mouth and engages in fun
06:19activities.
06:21Loves the beach and also loves the creeks around town.
06:25So the biggest issue that I certainly face when searching for a missing person is misdirection.
06:32Sometimes people will give you inaccurate information and you will have cause to act
06:37on that information without realising that you're actually going the wrong way or you're
06:41searching for the wrong person.
06:44It's one of the challenges that we need to take into account and there's certain things
06:48that we can do to negate that possibility and that's talk to multiple people or if we've
06:53got CCTV footage available.
06:57It's very common these days for people to have it on their houses, so it's of great
07:00benefit to us if there is a missing person and people can check their CCTV.
07:05That will enable us to help locate somebody a lot quicker.