 |
Tracking – Most of the areas in Ventura County are rural. However, there are some highly populated urban settings with homes, businesses, parks and schools. In the past the canines would be deployed on an area search to look for fleeing criminals or missing people, but today canine handlers typically track suspects and missing people.
Tracking is placing the canine in a tracking harness on a 30 foot leash and having the canine follow the ground disturbance made by the person as they fled from the area. Tracking can be used over grass, dirt or hard surfaces such as cement or asphalt. As a person walks or runs they leave behind a scent trail. The trail is a disturbance to the ground. The weight of the person crushes the vegetation or scuffs the cement or asphalt and as the biological matter decomposes it has a different odor than the ground around it that the canine can detect.
The canine’s sense of smell is said to be 100,000 to 1,000,000 times greater than a humans. The person leaving the track is also depositing skin rafts along the track as well as odor of the shoes they are wearing. It is all these odors put together that the canine uses to follow the track. Ideally handlers like to start a track of a person within the first few minutes of that person fleeing or being missing. Realistically handlers will begin a track within 30 to 45 minutes of that track being set by the person fleeing or missing.
|
|
|
|
| |
Wind is really the only adversary of a tracking canine. In heavy winds the odor is blown away from the tracks origin and is difficult to follow, but never under estimate a very determined and motivated K9 team.
Handlers will attempt to track from scenes of robberies, assaults with deadly weapons, burglaries, and other serious crimes that have just occurred. The track will assist officers in establishing a direction of travel. If the track stops abruptly in a parking lot or the side of a street that information may assist investigating officers in determining where the suspect may have had a vehicle parked.
Tracking becomes an essential tool on deployments in the rural areas of Ventura County. Tracking can assist in narrowing the scope of a search in a large search area. Our handlers have had numerous successes with the deployment of the canine on a track |
| |
|
| |
|
