SUPPORTERS TOUT USE OF POLICE DOGS

WARNER ROBINS - Warner Robins police officer Scott Hydrick, alone late one night in a Warner Robins apartment complex parking lot, found himself standing before a dozen men he suspected were up to no good.  But he wasn't in trouble.

With a touch of a remote-control button on his belt, Hydrick's partner, a police dog named Gunner, was released from the police car and ran to his side.

And what could have turned into a bad situation for a lone officer on patrol instead turned into a routine drug bust and the seizure of loaded gun.

"If he hadn't been there, it could have been a different story," said Hydrick, an 18-year police dog handler.  "A police dog commands respect."

Gunner, a Belgian Malinois, is Hydrick's seventh four-legged partner.

Most agencies say police dogs provide a valuable crime-fighting tool.  But others aren't convinced that the dogs can earn their keep.

Tech.  Sgt.  Michael Socey, kennel master for the 78th Security Forces at Robins Air Force Base, said the primary asset of a police dog is its presence in volatile situations.

"The presence of a dog immediately de-escalates a situation," Socey said.  He said one security officer and a dog can handle a situation that might take three or four security officers to command.

The six police dogs, either Belgian Malinois or German shepherds, and the handlers under his command at Robins are deployed all over the world, Socey said.

The dogs use their bomb and explosive sniffing skills and security training for a variety of tasks from protecting forces overseas in Iraq to guarding foreign dignitaries visiting the United States, Socey said.

Houston County sheriff's police dog, Bandit, a German shepherd, specializes in drug detection, having sniffed out more than $500,000 in drug money this year, said his handler, Cpl.  Eric Barnett.  Bandit, Barnett and Sgt.  Chad Payne make up the sheriff's special drug enforcement team that patrols Interstate 75.

Most recently, Bandit sniffed out $17,000 hidden in a car's wheel compartment.  And earlier this year, the dog detected a pound of methamphetamine bundled inside a waterproof container hidden in a car's gas tank, Barnett said.

"If you walk into McDonald's, you smell fries and hamburgers.  But dogs also smell the mustard, the pickle, the lettuce, tomato," Barnett said.  "Their sense of smell is 10,000-times keener than ours and they are able to departmentalize and isolate the smells."

While Warner Robins may not draw the type of revenues that the sheriff's office does running patrol on interstate drug trafficking, the city's three dogs - soon to be four - serve a variety of functions.

Arno, a bomb-sniffing dog, was credited with finding a bullet at the crime scene of the 2003 murder of Tamarcus LaKeith Jordan.  A bullet had gone through the gypsum wallboard in the living room of Jordan's home and crime scene investigators could not locate it.  But Arno sniffed out the bullet, which had come to rest behind some wallboard.  Officers were able to cut through and recover the bullet, Hydrick said.  Three men - Tellis Lamar Clark, Kenny Leshon Jackson, both of Warner Robins, and Cesar Geronimo Sessions of Gainesville - are serving life sentences in prison for Jordan's murder.  The bullet was a valuable piece of crime scene evidence, Hydrick said.

The city's police dogs have also been used to track an Alzheimer's patient who wandered away from her home and to recover stolen goods in series of car break-ins, said Warner Robins police Sgt.  Bryan Stewart, who supervises the city's police dog force.  The goods were stashed in some bushes where the thief had probably hoped to return had the dog not found the stolen times first, Stewart said.

But not everyone is sold on police dogs.  While many law enforcement agencies use the dogs, others do not, including the Bibb County Sheriff's Office.

Lt.  David Davis, spokesman for the Bibb County Sheriff's Office, said the chief reason police dogs aren't used is a desire to multitask sheriff's deputies.

Dogs and their handlers are more of a speciality tool, Davis said, and can't always respond to what a regular sheriff's deputy could.

For example, in a traffic accident, police dog handlers could not respond because they cannot leave their dog on the side of the road while investigating the accident, Davis said.  "It's just a matter of resources and the best use of those resources," he said.

For the Crawford County Sheriff's Office, police dogs are a luxury, Sheriff Kerry Dunaway said.  After the last dog retired, the department disbanded its canine unit.  Police dogs are wonderful law enforcement tools, but when budgets get tight that's often an area that can get cut, Dunaway said.

A police dog costs between $3,000 and $5,000 - depending on the breed, level of training and type of specialty.  Specialties range from narcotics to patrol to explosives to tracking.  Annual costs include veterinary care, food and shelter.

But some law enforcement agencies get help to offset the expense.

"They are extremely economical for us," said Allison Grant, spokeswoman for the Monroe County Sheriff's Office.  The sheriff's office has two drug-sniffing black Labrador retrievers.

"A local vet provides medical services for them and also donates food to us.  So our handlers or the sheriff's office don't have to pocket those expenses," Grant said.

At the Dublin Police Department, Chief Wayne Cain will soon have a police dog on the force - a 3-month-old bloodhound named Kane who was a gift to the department from a Jeffersonville woman.

Not only will the dog be of service as a tracking dog, he'll also be a good public relations tool for the police department, Cain said.  He expects Kane will be a hit with area school children.

"Bad guys don't like police dogs, but the kids sure do," Cain said.