Police Pooches Sniff Out Arsonists, Succeeding Where Crime Labs Fail

NEW YORK — Only one out of 100 dogs makes the grade in this elite K-9 corps. Pedigrees count for naught. Most of them have been rescued from the pound.

These dogs easily work for up to six hours in frigid temperatures, sniffing charred debris, even through ice and water. Park Avenue dogs, with their little cold-weather sweaters for 15-minute walks, need not apply.

The top requirement for these dogs is to have the will and stamina to play all day long, because for them, it is a game.

For arson investigators, it is serious business.

The investigators credit these dogs with helping to bring in first-degree murder indictments, saving hundreds of man-hours and thousands of tax dollars, and they say their true potential is still unknown.

They are officially called Accelerant Detection Dogs, and the program is one of the newest ways to use man’s best friend. Trainers estimate that there are only about two dozen trained dogs in about a dozen states thus far.

The dogs are trained to take the investigator to the spot where an arsonist poured gasoline, alcohol, fingernail polish remover or some other inflammable liquid.

The dogs must find all of the spots where the accelerants were poured, which is why trainers stress the importance of the dog’s innate play drive. After he is rewarded for the first find, he is called upon to keep looking until he exhausts all possible sites.

One of the reasons investigators collect multiple samples is that the dogs are better than the sophisticated equipment back at the laboratory. The dogs, they think, can sniff out parts per trillion. The best science can do is parts per million. Handlers are often sure that their dogs are correct, but the equipment cannot corroborate it.

The dogs can also differentiate between accelerants and similar chemical gases normally found at a fire scene when items such as plastic have burned. The field equipment often gives false positive readings. The dogs don’t.

“He doesn’t make mistakes,” says Michael E. Knowlton, a New York state arson investigator who has a 90-pound yellow Labrador retriever named Buddy. New York state has two dogs, available to every city and county.

Dog Fingers Suspect

In Maryland, the second state in the country to have an arson-sniffing dog, Barney was instrumental in the first-degree murder indictments of an arsonist in the deaths of three children.

Barney, a 123-pound black Labrador, picked the suspect out of a lineup. Four men plus the suspect were standing in a room when John Farrell, Barney’s handler, opened the door and sent the big dog in. Barney roamed around, then sat down directly in front of the suspect. All of the dogs sit when they make a positive identification. Some, like Barney, will go a step further.

“Show me,” commanded Farrell. Barney put his nose on the man’s shoes.

The FBI lab confirmed the dog’s findings: kerosene on the shoes. Barney had earlier identified the spots where kerosene had been poured at the fire site.

The man goes to trial in late March.

Barney and John Farrell, chief of operations in the Arson K-9 Unit in Baltimore, have traveled up and down the East Coast helping states without arson-sniffing dogs of their own.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in Connecticut, along with the Connecticut State Police, trained the first arson-sniffing dog.

Farrell, who had trained hunting dogs for more than 40 years, heard about the program and went up to Connecticut to investigate. He could not get government funds when he got back to Maryland.

“In frustration, I trained my own dog to see if I could do what I saw. I wanted to prove that it worked,” says Farrell, who has almost 25 years of service in the Maryland state fire marshal’s office.

Thanks to the success of Barney, the nation’s second arson sniffer, Maryland now has six arson dogs.

New Jersey Police Sgt. Dennis McSweeny, a K-9 instructor for many years, has trained many of the dogs for other states. The two dogs working for New York state, Buddy and Hershey, were trained by McSweeny in a 10-week course in Atlantic City, N.J.

McSweeny and Farrell know of arson dogs in North and South Carolina, Maine, Florida, Washington, Iowa and Kansas, as well as New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Maryland.

Although Labradors have predominated, any breed will do. But the individual dog has to be special.

“Only five out of 500 dogs will make it through the course,” says McSweeny. “They must have a very sociable temperament and an extremely strong play drive. The ones that wash out usually get bored and won’t keep going. The dog has to want to play this game over and over.”

Like all good animal acts, this one is based on the dog’s natural instinct to fetch and retrieve, one of the reasons that Labs and other hunting dogs have predominated. The dog is imprinted with the scent of various accelerants from the four basic groups, and when he is brought to the fire scene, he essentially is retrieving that scent.

The dogs first receive basic obedience training as well as physical conditioning. They climb stairs, fire escapes, hurdle over barriers, learn to hop from one boat to another at sea, ride in a helicopter, and get hoisted up 75 feet in an aerial bucket. All with aplomb or it doesn’t count.

“The dog must be ready to go right to work when he gets to the scene and we may have to helicopter him in, or have him on a fire escape,” Knowlton says. “He must be able to do these things without getting flustered.”

No Bloodhounds

The even-tempered Lab is perfect, and his endurance and ability to withstand cold are also assets. However, there is an English springer spaniel named Ty in Iowa City, a few German shepherds, one mutt, a golden retriever, and a German short-haired pointer among this emerging band of firefighters.

There are no bloodhounds.

“Bloodhounds are the dumbest animals in the world,” offers McSweeny. “We’ve trained bloodhounds who couldn’t find their food dish.”

When Knowlton took the course from McSweeny, he went through four other dogs that washed out before he was paired with Buddy.

“It took four weeks for Buddy to learn, and it took me six weeks to learn to read him,” Knowlton says.

Knowlton says that when he is working Buddy in extremely cold weather, he puts him back in the car to warm up after six hours of sniffing through the ice that forms as firefighters put out the blaze.

Knowlton, 38, who is divorced, says his three daughters love Buddy and always want to play “Find the Cause.”

Buddy, however, is never allowed to chase rabbits, squirrels, cats or other dogs.

After a demonstration of Buddy’s prowess at the New York State Fire Academy on Randall’s Island, Buddy found a plank of wood under the light snow and brought it back for Knowlton to toss. Buddy didn’t tire of the game, but when it was time to go, Knowlton sharply said no and Buddy dropped the plank and readily reported for duty, the duty being a six-hour drive to Watertown, N.Y., to help investigate a major fire in which three people died in a senior citizens’ center.

Knowlton says he has to watch out for Buddy. He won’t let the dog get hurt. At one fire scene, red and blue chemicals were still oozing on the surface when Knowlton and Buddy arrived.

“I didn’t know what that stuff was,” says Knowlton. “I wouldn’t let Buddy go in until after it dried.”

The dog in Iowa City is decked out with rubber boots, which he hates, when he is called upon to work in such a situation.

The dogs have shown time and time again that they are better than the laboratories, but so far there has been no court case in which it was the dog’s word against the suspect’s.

McSweeny doesn’t think that will ever happen.

“The attorneys will never allow one of these dogs in a courtroom,” he says. “They would demonstrate to a jury what they can do and that would be that. What’s the attorney going to say to discredit the dog?”

Knowlton has testified twice before a grand jury, describing Buddy’s work. Buddy’s feats are also videotaped should they be needed in a courtroom.