It happened in some woods. It was there, a ten-year-old child had told police officers with all the courage they could muster, that they had been sexually abused; there that they were subjected to the most awful ordeal imaginable.
Investigators descended on the crime scene, an area of woodland that, given its size, presented a significant challenge to those tasked with the job of finding vital evidence.
Accompanying them, however, was a new member of the force — a canine colleague armed with a skillset no technology can even come close to replicating.
PD April is a yellow labrador trained to look for one very specific substance, and it took her approximately 90 seconds to find traces of semen belonging to the offender. He has now been convicted and is awaiting sentence.
For April, it counts as one of four convictions she has so far helped to secure, in tandem with her handler PC Steve Gunn.
Advertisement
“She’s amazing,” says PC Gunn. “She will find even a pinprick of seminal fluid — less than 0.1ml, sometimes years after it has been deposited.
“When we went to those woods, it was a fairly big area. But she found it in no time; key evidence. Ultimately she is here to assist the crime scene investigators. Indeed, the idea for training dogs to find seminal fluid came from a CSI officer in Derbyshire.”
April is one of only three seminal dogs in the UK force, and a member of the Cheshire and North Wales Police Alliance Dog Unit based at the Cheshire police headquarters in Winsford.
In the last two or three years the unit has significantly strengthened the force’s evidence-gathering powers by training these dogs to tackle very specific areas of crime.
PD Watson is a “digi-dog” who specialises in finding digital storage devices. It might be the mobile phones belonging to drug dealers. Or paedophiles concealing hard drives. It could be a sex offender who is prohibited from owning any kind of device that stores data; even something as small as a mobile phone Sim card.
Advertisement
• How a new squad of elite sniffer dogs is catching cybercriminals
In Winsford, the officers use an old farmhouse for training exercises. Watson, a black labrador-Staffordshire bull terrier cross, enters what is a typical living room with his handler, PC Gethin Edwards.
Two devices have been very carefully concealed, but not well enough to fool Watson. He indicates in no time that he has found them, with his success marked by the sound of Gethin’s handheld clicker. It tells Watson he is about to be rewarded with a treat — on this occasion the chance to play with his tennis ball.
“A dog’s nose is an incredible thing,” says PC Edwards. “I can’t actually explain how they do it, but every item has a unique scent. Somehow they can make the distinction between the electronics, say, in a television, and something like a Sim card. They don’t get confused; they find the devices we are looking for.
“Sometimes these items can be extremely well hidden, in pieces of furniture with false bottoms, for example. But he finds them.”
Advertisement
Outside, in a garden area at the back of the house, PD Bran is also on a training exercise. Another yellow labrador, Bran is what they call a victim recovery dog, trained to find traces of blood and human body parts.
His handler, PC Richard Land, has set him the task of finding a fragment of bone that has been buried under some stones and a tooth that has been wedged into a crack in the exterior wall of the house.
The bone piece he finds in seconds. The tooth proves more difficult because of a stiff, cool breeze that is blowing through the area. He can smell roughly where it is hidden but the wind throws him briefly off the scent. But he gets there eventually, and is rewarded accordingly.
This is advanced stuff; a game-changer for the police. PC Land is an instructor as well as a handler.
“The sensitivity of a dog’s nose — what they can actually find — is unbelievable,” he says. “I’ve had Bran since he was eight weeks old. He’s one of our forensic blood search and victim recovery dogs. Like the seminal dogs, they are crucial in assisting our CSI officers to find vital evidence at crime scenes.
Advertisement
“When you look at all the dog skills that we’ve got, it’s a case of moving with the times. Everyone has mobile phones now and we have to think of ways to find such evidence. The way to do it is with dogs.
“As humans we see things two-dimensionally, whereas a dog will see it three-dimensionally. They can accurately pinpoint the things we are looking for so the CSI officers can then recover the evidence. With everything else we have in policing, it’s an added advantage, an extra skill. We’re giving the CSI teams another tool in the tool box.”
• Crime-fighting dog wins award for sniffing out arsonists
These furry, four-legged forensic specialists are adored and admired in equal measure by their handlers. PC Gunn describes April as his “absolute favourite”. “She’s the best I’ve worked with,” he says. “A wonderful dog.”
They are very much regarded by their handlers as partners in combating crime. “Most handlers have two dogs and they live with us at home,” says PC Edwards. “It’s a cliché but we really do spend more time with our dogs than we do with our families. They are with us on our days off and they obviously come to work with us.
Advertisement
“Watson has been with me about seven or eight months and he’s just a lovely dog. I’d like to keep him even after he’s retired from the job. Definitely.”
Right now, however, PD April, PD Watson and PD Bran have work to do, using their super-sensitive snouts to put criminals behind bars.
