Security managers looking to source explosive search dogs for the first time have to ask the right questions, according to a former Metropolitan Police man.
Keith MacKenzie, now of Hertfordshire-based Canine Defensive Search Specialists, was a 33-year Met Police man, who on retiring was head of school and chief instructor of the London Region Police Dog Training Establishment. There he was responsible for providing training to UK and overseas agencies. Before the July 7 London bombings, and the attempts of July 21, he recalls, and as he reported in an interview in our January 2004 edition, the main call for search dogs was for narcotics – whether night-clubs; or the locker rooms of corporate workplaces that saw a potential drugs problem with staff. Since July 7, he reports wide- ranging telephone inquiries, from people carrying out security reviews and wondering where an explosives search dog would fit into an existing security regime (because one man and a dog sniffing is not all thatโs required – indeed, without planning around that, itโs almost reckless, in Keithโs opinion).<br><br>Whereas before July 7, Keith reports an individual company might feel there was a threat of explosives – because of an Israeli or some political connection to that individual firm – after July 7, any public venue, any gathering, any mode of transport may be at risk. <br><br>Keith adds: โNow the problem is that there are very few private companies that either have the expertise or the capability to provide a realistic operational search facility.โ Those seeking such a service, he advises, should ask careful questions. He adds: โLoads of private companies are quite capable of getting a licence to hold narcotics; in fact, itโs almost paper exercise, applying to the Home Office. And you can buy your narcotics training samples from the Forensic Science Laboratory – heroin, cocaine, amphetamines. That is quite an accessible part of the security market. However, when it comes to explosives, itโs completely different. The procedure to get an explosives licence is quite lengthy.โ In particular, new explosive storage regulations are difficult to meet – on sites there are set distances to keep to, for example. <br><br>Keith says: โUnfortunately, you have a lot of companies claiming to provide explosives search dogs but there is no way of knowing what they have been trained on, or how they are trained.โ In his Met days, part of his work was looking at national standards in this area: โAnd the thing that strikes me about the private sector is, there is no quality assurance process, and no standards, even to the most basic thing, like acquiring training samples [of explosives].โ In the quantities needed, itโs almost impossible, he adds: โIt has taken more than a year to source all our training samples and explosives, and acquire the licence and it has cost £20,000-plus. I know that is just not happening with other companies, so I question when I see – and you only have to look on the internet, the amount of companies offering explosives search dogs, I just question what they are capable of finding, if anything.โ Keith points out the differing implications between narcotics and explosives search:not finding cannabis in a locker may not be very professional, but the implications are nowhere near those of missing an explosive device. <br><br>Technically, he continues, there are very few mechanical devices for vapour detection that can match a canine – depending on the training by the human, and what material the animal has been trained on. Training on chemical look-alikes does not compare, Keith says, with live explosives, โwhich is really the only way of training explosives search dogsโ. <br><br>While Keith appreciates that the Security Industry Authority is licensing security dog handlers, via the general licence for a security officer, he says that we are a long way from regulating UK explosives search dogs; nor is he sure who would regulate.<br><br>To return to Keithโs view that it would be โalmost recklessโ to have a dog and handler searching for explosives, without it being part of a larger security plan. Yes, a dog visibly searching does bring a feel-good factor, so that the public can feel something is being done. Yet such a dog is not a complete panacea, he argues. You need contingency plans, if a search picks something up. <br><br>Summing up, Keith is aware that some security managers may find explosives searches unfamiliar. The first question a security manager should ask, he advises, is: have you got an explosives storage licence? and next, what explosives are dogs being trained on? Because the terroristsโ explosives of choice may change, so that it is a waste of time for a dog to be trained to detect TNT if terrorists are using other explosives.
