Specialist Dog Units

Dog Support Units (DSU's) are involved in a police investigation to provide the necessary support to police officers at a crime scene or when in pursuit of a criminal. The dog's unique skills are extensive and include:

• Locating objects dropped or concealed during a criminal incident.
• Following a track left by a person on the ground.
• Chasing and detaining a person who runs away when challenged to stop.
• Disarming violent armed suspects and controlling hostile crowds.

During a fire investigation, the average police unit may not be required to disarm a criminal but some more specialist skills are required as dog units are usually only called in on arson, missing persons, gun or drug related cases. Some of the dogs such as Labradors and Spaniels are trained to find specific scents like explosives (of various types), human remains and blood on the premises or on a person in the crowd, and even fire accelerants. Dog units are usually required at a fire scene post-fire in order to search the scene for a presence of flammable items, ignitable liquids, and potential gas leaks so as to identify the origin or seat of a fire if it isn't already clear. Not only are they searching for these occurring liquids at a property they will be able to effectively search for fire accelerants found at the scene that could highlight the possibility of arson. 

Dog units are a part of the police and in turn, will spend the most time liaising with the police on scene as well as the senior investigator and fire investigator. This will be in order to understand the specifics of the case so as to ensure that the dogs are searching for the right thing when in the fire scene. Units will also liaise with the Health and Safety Executives (HSE) in order to determine what parts of the scene are safe for the dogs to search. This may on some larger cases, like in a factory or mill, mean the units must correspond with the POLSA officers in order to establish what areas are key search areas and what areas have already been searched by other teams. Anything found by the teams will be collected by SOCO's and passed to Forensic Scientists for further analysis. The Investigators on the case will also be alerted of the findings to allow for them to make a decision on the next steps of the case.