By CODE 4 K9 | SWAT/K9 Integration & Advanced Police K9 Training

This video shows patrol officers involved in a pursuit with a murder suspect. Early in the video, the suspect stops at a streetlight, giving the impression that he was going to give up. No shock here. That was a move to bait officers out of their vehicles, only to take off after they do. As an officer, you have to play it for what it is and get out and initiate a high-risk stop regardless of whether you think he’s going to take off or not. One, you need to get off the X, meaning you need to move from the area the suspect thinks you are, for safety reasons. Additionally, you have innocent bystanders and motorists around you; you must take action. If you take the route of a high-risk stop, vehicle traffic needs to be stopped in both directions in a manner that you’re hopefully not in a crossfire position.

During the high-risk stop, the officers are thrown off guard. A male subject exits the driver's side door, but it isn’t the suspect. After this individual exits the vehicle, the suspect gets into the driver’s seat and takes off. This sucks because someone is going to get the unfortunate task of detaining the subject, and their time is over. That doesn’t mean that something positive won’t come of it. Perhaps this individual can provide valuable information to officers, such as whether the suspect is armed, where they are heading, and the suspect’s cell phone number, so we can work on a ping in case we lose the suspect during the pursuit. That way, we can know the suspect’s location using his GPS coordinates.

We pick back up with the video, and the chase is back on. After a failed PIT maneuver, officers were able to initiate and complete a successful PIT of the vehicle. Fortunately, the car came to a stop in a narrow street with no vehicle or pedestrian traffic. For K9 deployment reasons, this couldn’t be a better scenario. There are no distractions for the dog, and there is zero chance of a bad bite on an innocent person.

The handler grabs the dog from the back seat and pushes forward toward the suspect vehicle, then deploys the dog off-leash. The only thing the handler could have done better is to use the patrol car on the right side and deploy the dog from there, rather than forging forward with his dog. Forging forward after you’ve deployed your dog is probably the biggest mistake handlers make because it’s a training scar. This bad habit occurs because, during training, the handler pushes up when their dog is engaging the decoy in a scenario to praise the dog for doing the right thing, thereby encouraging a stronger muzzle fight or deeper bite if the decoy is wearing a suit. The suspect was wanted for murder, and coming around the corner blindly with his dog was dangerous. The handler reduced time and distance, thereby diminishing his action-reaction time. As a handler, let your dog work the bite and move up with a cover officer in a manner that’s safe for everyone involved.

You can see the dog overshoot the vehicle, which isn’t a big surprise. There’s very little odor for the dog to pick up on, which may have made the dog check the car first. I guess that the dog didn’t see anyone downrange of the vehicle and instinctively turned back. He may have heard the suspect move, or maybe he picked up the suspect in his peripheral vision. The dog quickly apprehended the suspect on his arm and remained on the bite until he was physically removed from the suspect. You may wonder why I bothered to say that the dog remained on the bite. I’ve seen many deployments where the dog comes off the bite. There are several reasons why this might happen, and it is a topic that deserves its own conversation. All in all, this was a great deployment by the handler, and the dog performed exceptionally well.