Do police dogs sniff for guns?
Today, specially trained police and military dogs can sniff out bombs, drugs, electronics, people’s scents, and even guns. With gun issues on the rise in the United States, we have seen an increase in training various K9 units to sniff out guns and ammunition.
Dogs can be trained in all sorts of scent-work, including the detection of ammunition due to their superb ability to smell. This ability manifests itself in the biology of our beloved pets.
Why would you bring a bomb dog to your narcotics search warrant? You would not because bomb dogs are of no use in finding drugs. The same would be said for a gun dog under the above example. Assume that during the controlled buy of cocaine, a confidential informant tells the police that the defendant either had a gun on him or saw a gun in an area within ready reach of the defendant. Does that change things?
Furthermore, a well trained and maintained gun dog has the ability to not only find firearms, but also shell casings. At first blush, this would not seem to be that fruitful to a basic investigation, but technology allows a crime lab to match spent shell casings to each other and eventually to a firearm. By comparing shell casings from crime scene “A” and casings from crime scene “B” weeks later, your crime lab can determine whether they were fired from the same gun.
One of the newest trends is the use of a well-trained K-9 partner to detect firearms
Gang or Homicide Search Warrants Another helpful area for the practical use of a gun dog would be during the execution of a search warrant in a location that a violent gang in the city uses as a flop house. As long as the police can relate the house to violent gang activity and those members living at the residence to be searched have some gun history, the police stand a good chance to convince the judge to allow them to look for weapons which would relate to a drive-by shooting that law enforcement knows was committed by a certain gang.
Hopefully, the discovery of the gun would lead to some type of ballistic match that might solve the crime. Along the same vein, the gun dog would be very useful in searching the house, attic, garage or yard for the gun hidden in a domestic style or staged home invasion, robbery, burglary or homicide. On some occasions, the firearm is actually hidden on the premises itself. The homicide detectives develop probable cause to search a location for evidence including the possible murder weapon. The gun dog would be an excellent asset to have at the police department’s disposal in an attempt to locate the weapon in a timely manner or direct the detectives to a unique area to search that might be overlooked by the human eye.
Can a police dogs smell firearms?
Today, specially trained police and military dogs can sniff out bombs, drugs, electronics, people’s scents, and even guns. With gun issues on the rise in the United States, we have seen an increase in training various K9 units to sniff out guns and ammunition.
Nowadays, dogs that have been specially trained can sniff out firearms as well as drugs, bombs, electronics, and even human bodies. As issues with firearms continue to rise in America, there has been an increase in dog training to seek out firearms and ammunition.
A detection dog or sniffer dog is a dog that is trained to use its senses to detect substances such as explosives, illegal drugs, wildlife scat, currency, blood, and contraband electronics such as illicit mobile phones.
Today, dogs are pertinent members of Police and Task Force agencies across the country. They have been trained to sniff out both biological (e.g., humans in a research and rescue mission) and non biological (e.g., narcotics, guns, ammunition and explosives) objects in a variety of circumstances.