January/February 2020 - ISSUE 78
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Featured Agency Search One Rescue Team
Bitework Training Leg Bites for Reality
K-9 Legal
K-9 Indication: What Do the Courts Require?
SEARCH ONE RESCUE TEAM K-9 SAR IN NORTH CENTRAL TEXAS
FEATURED AGENCY: SEARCH ONE RESCUE TEAM (SORT)
MISSION STATEMENT – “To assist governmental agencies locate lost or missing people”
1983 year established 150+ agencies served 13 mission ready K-9 teams
5 Air Scent 5 Human Remains Detection (HRD) 3 Trailing
SORT is available to assist official governmental agencies with the location of lost or missing persons such as:
URBAN SEARCH • RURAL SEARCH • WILDERNESS SEARCH • LIGHT DISASTER SEARCH • HUMAN REMAINS DETECTION • PUBLIC SERVICE APPEARANCES • EDUCATION
The SEARCH ONE RESCUE TEAM (SORT) was established in the Dallas / Fort Worth area in 1983 by founder and current Executive Director, Paul Lake, with the simple mission statement “To assist governmental agencies locate lost or missing people.” SORT is a volunteer non-profit organization which makes itself available to assist any official governmental agency with the location of lost or missing persons, including miss4 2 | policek9magazine.com
ing children, elderly walk-a-ways and suicidal persons. Some of their K-9s are trained to locate disaster victims, while others are trained to detect human remains. Starting as search managers and visual trackers, the team began to develop relationships with local law enforcement and helping with major ground search operations. A few years later they added trained search dogs as an asset and the
team began to grow both in resources and mission requests. Search One is now one of the busiest ground SAR teams in the nation averaging over eight mission request per month.
Presently, SORT has 13 “mission ready”, field deployable, K-9 teams, including 5 trained in air scenting, 5 trained in Human Remains Detection (HRD), and 3 in Trailing. Seven additional dogs are in training as of this writing.
BECOMING MISSION READY:
In order to become “mission ready” there are three training levels to be completed after the dog has been screened into the program. Each level contains progressively difficult milestones the “team” must reach and show proficiency in. Once they have accomplished all the requirements in Level 3 they are required to accomplish six final field logs, on a pass/fail basis, where the skills are learned and tested over various field conditions (unreachable, distractions, no victim (or source), at night, etc.). Finally, the K-9 handler must pass a written test, and the team must pass a final “Mission Ready” field test under realistic conditions.
Nearly 60% of SORT’s callouts concern searching for potentially live missing persons, approximately 35% being HRD, and the balance is spread out over disaster and child abductions. Having served more than 150 agencies since 1983, and although they cover all North Central Texas and parts of southern Oklahoma, 92% of the SORT searches occur within a 150-mile radius of DallasFort Worth airport. The Police, Fire and Emergency Preparedness 43
FEATURED AGENCY: SEARCH ONE RESCUE TEAM (SORT)
SORT is considered a valuable resource from the small rural law enforcement agency to the City of Dallas Office of Emergency Preparedness and every type of response unit in between. agencies of the cities of Dallas, Fort Worth, Grand Prairie and Arlington, as well as the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the Texas Department of Public Safety, including the Texas Rangers, are the most frequently assisted agencies. SORT is recognized nationally as a leader in the search and rescue community and has established excellent working relationships within the emergency response community. SORT is considered a valuable resource from the small rural law enforcement agency to the City of Dallas Office of Emergency Preparedness and every type of response unit in between. In addition to having “mission ready K-9s and K-9s in training, SORT has an intense “Flanker” training program. Flankers are used to assist a working search team by handling radio communi-
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cations and navigating as the search teams moves. Recruits first must pass several steps in the screening process, that include three visits to team training, a written application process, a doctor’s release, a pass/fail personal fitness test which consists of a five mile cross country walk/ run in one hour and forty-five minutes while carrying a 25 pound backpack, a background check, a reference check and finally a board review. The actual flanker training consists of six modules, and typically takes eight to twelve months to complete. These modules include: Orientation and Standard Operating Procedures (SOP’s), Communications, Navigation, Land Search, K-9 Operations and Base Operations. The training is completed with six pass/fail logs, a written test and a final “mission ready” certification field test.
MOBILE COMMAND CENTER:
SORT has a mobile command center that was anonymously donated to the unit. The Command Center is used at any major operation (missing person search, disasters, etc.). Inside the Command Center are two search management operation stations, one for the radio operator and one for field team briefing. It has a handheld radio charging bank for 26 radios, 2 large screen monitors in the command area where information from any workstation can be
cast for briefing of the participating agencies. A 30-foot hydraulic mast for the radio antenna, plus a CCTV camera for monitoring the exterior command area are on the rear of the vehicle. The vehicle is also equipped with a mobile repeater for extending the radio range when necessary. The interior of the unit has a kitchen, bathroom, a printer, two cameras to record interior activities and numerous storage compartments with support supplies, extra uniforms, medical equipment and rescue equipment.
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FEATURED AGENCY: SEARCH ONE RESCUE TEAM (SORT)
Because of their expertise in Search and Rescue, the SORT Team has been involved in several high-profile cases. Following are two of these cases:
CASE #1:
In January of 2009, Search One was asked by the Texas Rangers to assist in the location of a missing teen that had disappeared on December 23rd. The Rangers were working in conjunction with the Young County Sheriff’s Department, which is located approximately 200 miles outside of the DFW area. A suspect was in custody and through the investigative process, four target areas had been determined. Target one was the suspect’s car which was in the parking lot of the jail. One of the HRD Teams worked the car and confirmed no evidence of human remains were detected. The three remaining targets included the suspect’s residential property, his workplace property (about 10 acres of industrial drilling equipment) and a body of water with bridge access.
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SORT set up base operations on the workplace property but decided to search the residential property first. This property was relatively small and had been thoroughly searched by investigators the prior day. They deployed a first HRD team who worked the perimeter and then entered the residential back yard. The dog gave the handler a marked change in behavior near a shed located in the yard but did not alert. The handler finished his first sweep and reported to the second handler a need to confirm his dog’s behavior change. The second HRD K-9 was deployed, and six minutes later he alerted on a trash pile located behind this shed. The flanker and the accompanying Sheriff’s officer were asked to check the area of the alert and they located the victim’s body. It was secured in multiple bed sheets and wrapped in a plastic swimming pool underneath a large pile of trash.
CASE #2: On October 29, 2011, at approxi-
mately 0100 hours, Search One was contacted by Carrollton, TX PD to assist in the location of what was thought to be a 10-year-old girl who had walked away in her sleep from a local apartment complex. The team responded and spent the first 14 hours of this operation attempting to locate the girl as a missing person. While there were suspicions early on if there was more to the story than a wandering child, it was not until her body was located at approximately 1530 hours that it was confirmed she had been abducted. While the efforts of the SORT dog teams were instrumental in directing resources toward the area where her body was located, the more important benefit that the team was able to provide did not start until after she was located. By this point, Carrollton PD had brought a person of interest in for questioning and asked if the SORT dogs would be able to pick out a vehicle from a line up if it had transported a body. SORT agreed to try, and advised them of the parameters of how to set up a blind vehicle line up. Two of the dogs worked this line up independent of each other and both dogs alerted at the same location on the same vehicle.
This information was used to obtain a search warrant and inside the driver’s door where both dogs had indicated, a knife was found. Later test determined the knife had blood residue and eventually DNA proved it matched both the victim and the suspect. Subsequently SORT was asked if their dogs could trail the suspect’s route from where the body had been located. Again, they agreed to make the attempt. The suspect’s shoes were obtained as a scent article and one of the SORT Bloodhound teams was able to trail the suspect vehicle route from the site of the body all the way back to the apartment from where she was abducted, and indicate on the front door. Both the car line up and the suspect trail were used as key elements in the prosecution’s case against the suspect who late in 2011, pleaded guilty and was given a life sentence. This search started small as a normal missing person case and quickly escalated to a full-blown multi-agency child abduction investigation. The SORT was fortunate to have been called in early and was able to contribute from the onset all the way through the preliminary hearing for the trial itself.
As you can see, the Search One Rescue Team is, without a doubt, one of the most dedicated, professional and highly trained Search and Rescue units in the United States. More information on the Rescue Team can be found at www.searchone.org. Alan Kalfus is a retired Florida police K-9 handler and trainer with 42 years of law enforcement experience and 29 years in K-9. In addition to training Police K-9’s for several agencies, during his career he trained four narcotic detector dogs for the Nicaraguan National Police. Two were assigned to the Augusto Sandino Airport in Managua, Nicaragua and two were assigned to the Nicaragua/Costa Rica border crossing on the Pan American Highway. Alan is also a Police K-9 Evaluator for the Florida Criminal Justice and Standards Training Commission and conducts tracking seminars. He can be reached at 772.336.3093. 47