 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
Back
|
TIA to replace its bomb dogs
By JEAN HELLER, Times Staff Writer
Airport officials want to switch to an FAA program that provides bomb dogs for free and pays the cost of their instruction and upkeep. They were not willing to do that by attrition, waiting until the current dogs reach old age, despite a significant investment in them. Their initial 400 hours of training cost TIA $6,000 per animal. The airport also paid for 20 hours a week of recurrent training. Now the dogs will become pets to the airport police officers who teamed with them. The FAA acknowledges that the demand for bomb dogs as soared since Sept. 11, but any airport that asks for FAA-certified teams will get them. The agency has 190 teams at 40 airports and plans to add 90 teams at 25 airports this year and another 48 teams at 16 airports next year. Louis Miller, executive director of the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority, said there is a practical reason for going now with new dogs trained and certified by the FAA. "We actually decided we wanted to be a part of the FAA program 18 months ago," Miller said. "Our teams are good, no doubt about it. But since they aren't FAA-certified, we have to declare that when we have cause to search an aircraft, and it's up to the airline whether we can do it or not. "It's also best to have our teams work with the same training as teams at other airports." With diminished air travel cutting into airport revenue, Miller acknowledged that having the FAA pay for the dogs and initial training and contribute $40,000 a year per team for recurrent training and upkeep was an important factor, too. "If we can get the FAA to pick up this cost, that's all to the better," Miller said. Asked why the airport didn't help ease the national demand for bomb dogs by putting its existing dogs through the FAA program, Miller said experience showed that didn't work very well. "When you have dogs trained under one system, they don't retrain well," Miller said. "The FAA has to certify that the dogs and handlers meet certain standards, and the percentage of retrained dogs that can do that isn't very high." TIA's current bomb dogs were trained to standards of the U.S. Police Canine Association. Two of the dogs retired last Sunday when their handlers, Detective Richard Osborn and Officer Jack Lively, left for the FAA training facility at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. Osborn's dog, Keno, a 5-year-old Belgian Malinois, and Lively's dog, Kramer (so named because of his puppy tendency to run into walls), a 3-year-old greyhound-black Lab mix, became pets the same day. This leaves Apollo, 5, a chocolate Lab, and his handler, Detective Frank Major, to watch the airport until Osborn and Lively return in 10 weeks. "If we need backup, we've made arrangements with the Tampa Police Department and the Hillsborough and Pinellas sheriffs offices, and we can call on MacDill Air Force Base if we have to," Major said. "We've got plenty of bomb dogs around." But Major took exception to the idea that Keno, Apollo and Kramer couldn't have been retrained. "That's not necessarily true," he said. "But the FAA wants you to use their dogs and be 100 percent in their system, so that is what we are going to do." However, Kathleen Bergen, an FAA spokeswoman, said TIA was getting new dogs because it asked for new dogs. "They could have requested that their dogs go through our training," she said. "It was their choice." Ironically, the new dogs won't come to the job with as many skills as the old dogs possess. The FAA training teaches the dogs to "alert" to 14 explosive substances, two more than military dogs are required to recognize and five more than most police agencies require. But the three dogs who have become a familiar sight at TIA learned to alert to 18 explosives, four more than the FAA requires. "When we get the new dogs here, we'll probably give them additional training to bring them up to our old standards," Major said. "We won't lose a step." When the dogs smell something suspicious, they sit down and stare at the spot from which the scent is coming. They never attack or paw at a bag because impact or motion could detonate a bomb. The transition will be helped by the fact that Major will continue to patrol with Apollo at least until October, when Apollo will retire and Major will go to Texas to team with a new partner. "We'll have a transition period, where Apollo is working and the new dogs are learning," Major said. "By the time Apollo leaves, the two new dogs will be up to where he is." But the change will not be easy, emotionally. "The dogs are used to going to work every day, and they're going to have to get used to not working," said Major. "I've worked with Apollo for four years. We're bonded, and it will be hard to retire him, but we'll both have to get used to it. At least, they're letting us keep them as pets." That decision was left up to each officer. "We could have found other places for the dogs to work," Miller said, "but we decided to leave it up to each man, and they wanted to keep the dogs." The initial training for FAA certification as a team takes 10 weeks and is conducted at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. Each handler works with two dogs, and at the end of training takes with him the one dog with which he has the best relationship. "Dogs have a natural ability to hunt for food by scent," Bergen said. "What the training does is substitute that ability to hunt for food with an ability to hunt for specific explosive substances by their peculiar smells." Does this mean the dogs are no longer interested in food? "No," said Bergen. "They're still dogs."
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
Headlines From the Times local news desks |
