POLICE DOGS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19762, 13 April 1926, Page 10

POLICE DOGS.

VASTLY OVERRATED. OF LITTLE PRACTICAL VALUE. There is a common belief, which has probably been fed by fox-hunting and by detective stories, that a hound or a police dog can track down any thief once it has sniffed any object he may have dropped, be it a handkerchief, a matchbox, or a cigar end (writes tho Berlin correspondent of the Manchester Guardian). Hie Berlin police have conducted a long series of experiments, and have come to the conclusion that tho police dog has been vastly overrated. The results of these experiments are summarised in the Vossische Zeitung They are fully recorded by Major Most, the director of the Police Dog School at Gruenheide, in his book “Beitrage zur Verwendung van Hunden in Kriminaldienst.’’ Major Most’s experiments show that even in artificially favourable conditions, when the scent is fresh and is not crossed by ether trails, the dog usually fails ‘o follow it up. This, of course, is not so when the scent is very rank or otherwise distinctive, as it is in a fox-hunt. Major Most's experiments were made so as to test the dog’s ability to track, not ranksmelling animals, but human beings. When the scent was a few hours old or when it was crossed by others (as it would nearly always be in natural conditions) the animals were almost invariably unsuccessful in following it up. Major Most’s conclusions were challenged bv Police Inspector Graudenz. Tho challenge was accepted, and Inspector Graudenz’s trained dogs were put. to a number of elaborate tests, which fnllv confirmed Major Most's previous experiments. .a further series of tests was carried out with 16 trained dogs bv order of the Prussian Ministrv of the Interior. The animals ■ made to follow both simple and complex trails, to find hidden obiects after baring sniffed the owners! to find the owners after having the objects, and so on. Out of a total of 41 tests the dogs were indubitably successful in only two. Further exneriments had similar results. All the evidence went to show that police dogs may be useful as watchdogs, but for tracking down fugitive criminals they are so unreliable that it is dangerous to use them at all, seeing that mistakes are easily made. German country folk, especially on the big estates, have an almost superstitious faith in the infallibility of police dogs. The result is that when some crime has been committed the animals often track down the wrong people, who may find it impossible to establish their innocence in the eyes of infuriated villagers, who believe that hounds cannot go wrong. There is, in Germany, a demand for laws that will put an end to the harm done by so dangerous a superstition and to restrict the indiscriminate use of police dogs bv private persons.* Police dogs are useful in helping to protect life and property, especially on remote farms and estates, but it, is Major Most’s opinion that for tracking down human beings they are worse than useless, even in the hands of the police themselves.