NEW WEAPON.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 37, 14 February 1939, Page 10

NEW WEAPON.

AGAINST CRIME.

RADIO SETS ON DOGS.

CONTROL AT DISTANCE.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

SYDNEY, February 10.

At their forthcoming carnival the New South Wales Police Force will demonstrate a method of fighting crime which is new to the world. It has been developed by Constable Denholm, the trainer of the police Alsatians.

It occurred to him one day that it would be an invaluable help to the police in many situations if they could control their dogs at a distance, and ho set to work to see how this could be done by the use of wireless telephony. He got a city radio firm, using special valves imported from Holland, to build round a six-inch speaker a radio set which, including two small batteries, weighs only 81b. The set is attached to a small saddle, the receiver being on one side and the batteries on the other. The unseen aerial is three feet long. While awaiting the arrival of the valves from Holland, Constable Denholm set to work to make one of the smartest of the dogs, Zoe, microphoneconscious by training her to obey instructions delivered through a loudspeaker. In this way Zoe learned to fire a revolver, climb to the top of an 8-foot trestle and lower herself backwards, turn on a tap, fill a can with water, and remove and replace her collar.

Then, with the completed radio set strapped on her back, she went perfectly through all these tests again at her first trial at the police depot, under the critical eyes of the commissioner and deputy-commissioner of the force. The first time she heard the familiar voice of her instructor apparently coming from her back, she looked surprised, but she never hesitated about obeying his commands. Many Possible Uses. Constable Denholm sees many possible uses for dogs thus controlled at a distance. For instance, in searching for lost people or tracking wanted men in the bush, there is often trouble in recalling a dog which is out of sight. The constable believes that he will be able to develop a radio set up to a range of about three miles.

On many occasions when the Alsatians have bailed up wanted men, they have been puzzled whether to attack and hold the man or just "set" him till the police arrive. In such situations it would often be very useful to be able to control them by radio when they are too far away to hear ehouted command!. Again, a dog can be lowered by a rope down a-sheer cliff face where no policeman could go without risk, and from the top of the cliff the dog's movements could bo directed through the loud speaker. Police have proved that the nerve of thieves break* when they are trailed by an Alsatian at night in the dark in premises intp which they have broken. The dog moves on its quarry in silence, and more swiftly than any policeman could possibly do in the darkness. It can leap oyer bales and boxes with certainty, «and at tba word, of command, will not hwjtate to hurt itself . man. And these' dogs weigh about seven stone.

It; is easy to understand how a man's nerve WOUfd soon go as be crouched in the darkness, hearing the voices of unseen police directing in the Bearch for hini a Wg Alsatian which he cannot see or hear, and whose position he can only roughly guess at by the changing sound of the police Voice coming from the loud-speaker on its back. In daylight it is no use a man putting his hand to hl» hip pocket to draw a gun on a pohee Afeatian, fop they have been trained to recognise tbi* as the signal for an immediate leap on the man.