Stuff You Should Know - How Police Dogs Work

Episode Date: September 8, 2015

Police dogs have been used since the 19th century - one WWI German defector became a major movie star. But in the US the post-9/11 era has seen a K9 unit boom and questions and concerns have increased as well. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

this season on Running the Break with CJ and Alex. Rapper Meek Mill, so obviously huge ties to Philly was at a Sixers game recently and in what seemed like a real-life curb your enthusiasm as an episode, he accidentally tripped a ref sitting courtside as the ref was running back up court. You know what CJ? I gotta say, I feel like that should be a technical foul, one free throw for the opposing team. Yes, if you rep your town and your team as much as you do Meek Mill, that he's a Sixer, right? So the opposing team's got to take free throws or unless, you know, if we're going off of the curb episode, does Meek have the discography of that compares to like

Seinfeld tapes that he could bring to the ref's, you know, hospital bed? Shout out to curb, that was one of the greatest episodes ever. Listen to Running the Break with CJ and Alex on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by FanDuel. Make every moment more with FanDuel Sportsbook, an official partner of the NBA. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry, and this is Stuff You Should Know in the long running, never ending law enforcement suite. Another addition to that. Boy, this has got to be close to done, huh? I think that every time. In fact, I had to check. I was like, I could have sworn we had done this one. No. I guess we just did service dogs. We did service dogs. Service dogs in general. Do we do service dogs or guide dogs? I don't remember. I can't remember.

That was a great, great one. I always love talking about dogs. Yeah. In fact, we should just do one on dogs. Very interesting. I can't believe we haven't. Yeah, it's pretty, pretty fascinating, the history and the breeds and how that all works. Yes. So, yeah. This is about specific dogs, more often than not, German Shepherds and Belgian Malwaas. Don't forget about the Beagle Brigade. Oh, yeah. Those are so cute. The cutest little service brigade on the planet. Love little Beagles until they start howling. But other than that, they're very cute. That's right. Do they howl more than most dogs? Beagles? No, but when they do, they can howl. Oh, okay. They're like a hound. They're a member of the hounds. Yeah, my two howl at the sirens

that go by. Yeah, because it's like, but that's the only thing. And howling machine to them. Yeah, I love it though. I think it's great. Gotcha. Because it's over before you know it. No, no, I just like it. You don't have a Beagle, do you? No. But they howl. Yeah, most dogs howl. Huh. It's not like a Beagle trade. I thought it was. Beagles and hounds and bassa hounds, blood hounds. I grew up with a bassa hound. It was pretty great. At your house? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was Beau. He was awesome. He used to trip on his ears. He'd step on them. Those poor dogs. Yeah, that's back when I knew better and got like, you know, I want this breed of a dog. Let's go buy one. Right. Now, you know, you rescue the mutt from the kennel. That's how you

should get a dog. Sure. All right. I'm off my soapbox. So like I was saying, Malinois, German shepherds, labs, police dogs and howl and little Beagles. Mainly German shepherds, though. Yeah. From what I've seen. Well, apparently the Belgian ones are pretty, I'm pretty sure I'm saying it right. Malinois. Well, that's where it all started. In Belgium. Yeah. Yeah. Let's start with the history of police dogs, man, because while they are pretty ubiquitous here in the United States these days, you always see like a car that says like K9 unit or whatever. Yeah. They like to release the dogs a lot these days on protests, which is pretty disheartening. Sure. But that's actually fairly recent, at least in the United States. Europe has been doing this for a long time.

Yeah. The first recorded police dogs were in France in the 14th century. They guarded duck installations. Oh, yeah. And then in 1888, London, the London Metropolitan Police Force, first used bloodhounds to work the Jack the Ripper case. Really? Man, a lot of stuff came out of that case. Yeah. A lot of things like forensics that we're using today still and shouldn't be came out of that case. And they still couldn't catch them. No. Never figured it out. Did you ever see that? Oh, what was the guy from Knight Rider's name? The Hoff. What's his full name? Hasselhoff. Yeah, David Hasselhoff. He goes by the Hoff, though. Yeah. He did it one where the Tower Bridge or the London Bridge was rebuilt at like in Arizona. What's that famous lake in

Arizona? The Resort Lake? Um, Habetsu? Yes. They rebuilt the London Bridge at Lake Habetsu and Jack the Ripper's ghost came with it and started killing everybody. Was that like a TV movie? I think it was made for TV. It certainly has a production value made for TV movie. And Hasselhoff is the police detective with the bad attitude. He's the only guy with the chops to solve this case. Yeah. And everybody thinks he's crazy because he's like, it's Jack the Ripper's ghost. It was, I saw it when I was a kid and I think it's on like Amazon Prime, so it's streaming for free. I don't remember what it's called, but it's on there. Man, I got to seek that one out. That's crazy. And that was back in his Knight Rider heyday, I guess. Yeah, he was clearly riding

high. Pre Baywatch even, I guess. Yeah. Oh, I forgot he was on Baywatch, wasn't he? I mean, that's, oh, he made his name all over the place. Sure. On stage, screen. Yeah, now he's the senior in Germany. So Belgium in Ghent, G-H-E-N-T Belgium. They first started using about 10 years later than London in 1899. And they actually had a program set up. Yeah, like the first real police dog program. And it was a big success. And in October of 1907, New York police department chief, I guess, George Wakefield, went to Ghent in Belgium and came back with five dogs. They just followed them home. Started using them in New York City in 1908. Yeah. And then New Jersey followed suit very quickly and so did Detroit. The thing is, is all of these police

canine units were disbanded within a few years because they didn't know how to train the dogs properly. Yeah. I think the thing I saw said from 1951 to 1954, there were no police dogs in the United States. And then later in the 1950s, they started coming back. And then 1970s, they became really widespread as far as many municipalities having a canine unit. Yeah. And initially, it was like, oh, I need a police dog. You have a German shepherd and leave it to me in your will. That was like a police dog arrangement for a while. And finally, law enforcement agencies around the country, apparently 2001 set off a huge boom in demand for police dogs. That's one of the big reasons why they're so ubiquitous today. Although they've been in use a lot longer than that. Yeah.

But in any small town now, you're going to find at least one canine unit post 9-11. Right. Bombsnippers. Right. But at some point, they figured out the ones that they're doing in Europe, let's just import them from there because they know what they're doing in Belgium and Holland and other areas where they have these longstanding police training programs where you can buy a certified dog and then you actually teach the trainer how to deal with that dog rather than the trainer training the dog because the dog already comes trained and ready to go. Well, there's still a lot more training you have to do once you get them over here. But for what I read, it's like 8,500 bucks to buy the certified dog and then another 10 grand to train

them in the United States. Oh, really? Yeah. But they pay for themselves. Well, they do because they're usually paid for with drug money that has been seized. Sometimes by drugs that have been sniffed out by police dogs. So the police dogs are generating income to buy other police dogs, among other things. Yeah. And fat dog houses and great treats like the frozen ice cream treats that dogs love so much. Yeah. I bet canines get those. Why do they use dogs? One good reason is because their sense of smell is about 50 times more sensitive than a human's, which you don't need any more reason than that. Right. They can smell. I think this is the Grabster wrote this one, right? He actually interviewed a canine team, the human part of that

team in New York. And he said that his dog, Breston, found a shipment of marijuana in heat sealed Mylar bags inside plastic line crates sealed with foam sealant inside a closed storage garage with a cold. Yeah. Half asleep. So that's that's a little bit. That'll tell you a little bit about the sensitivity of a dog's nose. It's pretty amazing. They don't get confused. You can you can bury your drugs and coffee or wrap them in perfume and the dog will still go. No, no, I know what's in there. Nice try. Now let me bite your crotch. And the reason they are their noses are so since they had something like like 200 million olfactory receptors crazy where we have something like five million.

Yeah, we're dummies in the smell department. Right. So dogs are also used not just for sniffing stuff out, whether it be drugs or bombs or whatever. They're also used as patrol dogs. Yeah. Which basically means that they're attack dogs at the ready. Yeah. And apparently just the very presence of a dog can keep a physical confrontation from taking place or escalating. Oh, yeah, I've seen it on cops. When they get that dog out, you most often see the the dude go, okay, okay. Where do you want me? Because they've got that dog barking and they don't. I don't know. It's weird that being beaten down by a human isn't enough, but that dog is scary. Yeah. You know, well, you can't really reason with the dog. You can't be like enough.

But yeah, what am I saying? I don't know if you can reason the top is beating you down either. So with the with the dog, actually, they fall into this spectrum of escalation of violence that's allowable among law enforcement. Yeah. And actually come after the baton, but before the cop draws his gun. Right. So baton doesn't work. You can release the dog. The dog doesn't work. You can pull your gun. And then if that doesn't work, you can pull the trigger. That's the continuum of violence. Is that what it's called in the book? Yeah, seriously. Continuum of force. I'm sorry. Okay. Big difference. Yeah. Let's just call it violence. They're not lullabying people to sleep and putting them in the police car. You know what

I mean? Like we said, it's usually German shepherds. Sometimes they use labs now, Labrador retrievers. What is that called again? You said it once before. The Belgian. Malinois. Malinois. And of course, the Beagles, which we'll talk about here in a bit. They're all well suited to police doggery work. And they can get them all over the place. Like you said, sometimes they're donated. But by and large, if you want a really cracked police dog, you still need to go to Europe. It's worth the money, apparently, because if there are issues later on in court about the dog, apparently, the first thing defense attorneys will say is, your papers, please. Yeah. And like they want to see this dog's background.

As far as the Supreme Court's concern, which we'll talk about later, is of 2013. That's all they need to say. And the reason they get these dogs from Europe is because their standards are just way more strict. And they, like you said, basically like, let's just take this dog and train them. They're like, this dog has been bred from this lineage. Right. I don't like that, that light patch on that dog's ear. Kill it. Don't say that. Well, they don't breed it. Yes. Kill its genetic line. Right. As far as Richard Dawkins is concerned, they might as well be saying kill it. Nuder it. Well, and that's a big thing is they leave these male dogs. They're usually male dogs. Right. Unnudered because that will keep that aggressive streak intact. Right. When it comes

to the cop, it's sort of the same thing. You want the best of the best. Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, ideally, yes, this is all like in ideals and in hypotheticals. It's all, it all makes other sense. And I think that's how it works out most of the time. Yeah. There's not any cop can go be a canine cop. It's you require, you're required to be at the very top of your class, very strong, energetic personality, very outgoing, willing to work very long hours. It turns out. Yeah. I did not realize this. Yeah. Well, we'll talk about that in a minute, but they say 60 hours a week. And they, and that's just working. The dog lives with you. It's your dog 24 seven, dude. Yeah. And they have such a tight bond. You are that dog's handler for its whole career. Yeah. And I

think 99% of the time these cops keep these dogs after they're retired as well. Oh, I would guess so. Yeah. It'd be hard to be like, all right, go live with someone else. Yeah. Good luck in your retirement. All right. Let's take a break here and we'll talk a little bit about dog basic training right after this. On the podcast, Hey, Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey, Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey, Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co stars, friends,

and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's paper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey, Dude, the 90s called on the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new I heart podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life.

Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to frosted tips with Lance Bass on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. So check the first thing that all police dogs go through is obedience training. It's kind of basic and simple, but it's also probably the most important training they go through. Sure. Especially when they're patrol dogs. Yeah, because they have to listen to their handler or else things can go really bad, really fast. Yeah, because their handler is going to tell them when enough is enough. And if the dog isn't understanding this and doesn't have that basic obedience, then you can get in big trouble.

Yes. As a police force and as a canine unit. Yeah. Lawsuits, arrests, well, probably not arrests. Can't arrest a dog, can you? Ed point. No, you can't. Okay. Well, I guess you can. In a way, the dog catcher arrests dogs. I thought that was an apt analogy. Yeah. So Ed points out or Ed dispels a myth here, actually, where I guess a lot of the dogs that come over from Europe take commands in their native language, right? Which makes total sense. Yeah. But apparently, there is a myth that the reason why is because they don't want people besides the handler accidentally or purposefully setting the dog off to attack by saying the word. Not true. No, apparently it's just it's easier for the dog to retain the training it had and for the handler to

just learn a few words in a foreign language. Yeah, it makes total sense. You're not going to get a German shepherd that's fully trained and say, all right, now forget all that because I want to say sit and not Zitzen. So Zitzen is sit in German plots. Plots is lay down. My friend Clay has a German shepherd he bought from Germany. And he gives commands in German, which is pretty interesting. Yeah. Yeah. You hear a lot of plots around his dog. I grew up with German shepherds, a couple of them. Plots is more efficient because it's one syllable and lay down is two. Yeah. Makes sense. Those Germans are efficient. What else? They can get into specialty training. They need to be, well, they need to have endurance and be super agile and be physically fit dogs. But then they

go through specialty training like whether it's drugs or bombs. I know Arson is a big one now to have them seek out accelerants. They can even track people. I didn't quite get how they do it, but I don't understand how they actually do it. Well, when I've seen it on cops, it's been like they have a piece of clothing from the guy and then there's like he's in this attic in this house somewhere to find them. So they have to have something to scent the dog. Yeah, I think so. Okay. That's what I didn't get. I mean, if it's just some guy who ran, then the dog wouldn't really be of any use, right? No, like just a description of the perp wouldn't help. Right. So this training actually, the secondary training

or specialty training is actually really simple and kind of clever and fun. It is. So the first thing that dog learns to do is to love a towel more than anything else on the planet. Yeah. It's, it becomes its toy, a towel that's been washed to remove any kind of scent. So the towel doesn't have its own scent. Yeah. And the dog learns to love it by playing tug of war with it, right? Oh yeah, dogs love the tug of war. And then in very short order, the cop gets his hands on a little baggie of pot and rolls it up with the towel. Yeah. And they keep playing tug of war. And now the dog's like, Hey, my favorite toy smells a lot like pot. Right. Okay. Now the next step is for the cop to hide the towel filled with pot and the dog finds it and

then they play tug of war. And eventually the dog will learn that anytime it smells pot, it thinks its toy is hiding and it goes after and starts digging in the place where that it smells pot. And hence the dog has just sniffed out pot, which means that drug sniffing police dogs are playing. Yeah. Which I didn't realize until it's pretty awesome. They think about when you see a dog clawing at the trunk of that guy's car, he's like, my toys in there, my toys and then they will replace that pot with all manner of drugs to cross train the dog. So they can basically they'll stuff that suitcase that that Hunter Thompson steals police convention into a towel. They can also do like explosive components too. Sure. For bombs and then

accelerants in the case of arson. Arson sniffing dogs are a big thing now. That's all the rage. They're so hot right now. And there's two ways that can alert. The aggressive alert is what we were just talking about is when they think there's that toy and they're just clawing and pawing and trying to dig it out of your suitcase or wherever. And then there's the passive alert. And that is when you don't want a dog clawing all up in your junk and you need a little more delicate situation, which is the case with the Beagle Brigade. Yeah, they just come and they sit next to the person. That's how they alert. That's the cutest alert passive alert. Yeah. And that's maybe they even like kind of cut their head toward the person.

The Beagle Brigade works with the USDA and they sniff out illegal produce. So you might have seen them at the airport here. Yeah, they were like little little vests. Yeah, but not bulletproof vests. No, but these dogs like patrol dogs. Sure. In fact, they have I think Ed mentioned a fundraiser they had to get bulletproof vests for the dogs at this one. And they like people just flooded them with money. Right. You know, because it's not cheap. No, I have no idea how much bulletproof vests is for a canine unit. Do you? You just know the one that you have. How much that costs? No, I don't know. My guess is a bulletproof vest is probably a couple of grand. Okay, I'm just throwing that out there. That's

what I'd pay. That's what you pay? Sure. Well, my friend, you would be taken for a ride because I can find a canine tactical mole vest for $199. That's dubious. And apparently Miami Heat Star Ray Allen has a side business where he supplies canine protection and safety products. And this is the segment called Josh reads his phone on the air. You've done that before. Don't even play holier than now. Have I? Yeah, you're looking up the name of the impossible the other day while I was yapping. Yeah, that's like the only time I've ever done that. So let's talk about a day in the life of a dog, a canine dog. Okay. I didn't know this before they even go on patrol from 4 p.m. to midnight. They're going to be going to high schools and going down the hallways sniffing at

lockers. Yeah, they're gonna be sniffing businesses if you need a business sniffed. You can call them and say, Hey, I'd like to pay. I guess you can pay, right? Just request it. I would guess a request. The cops are like, it's an investment in a bust. Right. Good point. Some days you have to go to court and then the dog has to go to court as well. And then eventually they will actually work their shift. And this is why they work such long hours because they're busy during the day. And then they go to work at night when they need to be banging the streets. And you're so tough. But my tough talk. Yeah. And when they're on the streets, what they're doing is just like any other cop, basically, you know, you do a lot of sitting around and waiting on

calls to come in. And when that call comes in, you might be sniffing out a car or you might be chasing a perp. Yeah, you could be doing both. Yeah, the dog that is. And when you are sniffing a car, if you're a dog, the Supreme Court ruled that a dog alert is enough for probable cause for a police search, like that in and of itself. So if the dog alerts its trainer, or handler, I should say, who's the only person on that scene who can read the dog's behavior necessarily, then that officer has a right to search that car. Yeah. And that's a very delicate matter because there's a lot of claims of false signals that a cop will make the dog react just so they can basically that the canine dog is a prop used to get searched whenever they

want. Yes. And those some people say that those are. Well, yeah. And I guess we'll talk about it later. The false positives. Yeah. Well, that'll be quiet for now. We can talk about it right now. Well, false false positives are the thing that you are most concerned with with police dogs, because they usually do not miss drugs, the presence of drugs when they are present. Right. The police dog, when it's brought around to like a car or something like that, it knows the score. It knows that it's supposed to be looking for its toys. So it's going to start sniffing around. Yeah. The thing is, is thinking about sniffing its toy or sniffing for its toy. And that's its whole thing. It's entirely possible that it's going to detect the presence

of its toy, meaning drugs are there when it's not there. And then it'll give it an alert and then the full search will begin, which is not a problem when that actually results in the discovery of drugs. Yeah. But that apparently happens generously speaking, only like 46% of the time. Yeah. They find drugs when a police dog says there's drugs there, which means like 54% of the time. The police dog is saying that there's drugs there when there aren't, which means a lot of innocent people get their property searched. Yeah. And there's a Chapel Hill, North Carolina law professor named Richard Myers, who in 2006 wrote an article on the George Mason Law Review where he basically said the controlled testing to get numbers on these dogs is terrible. And he did some math

based on something called the Bayesian probability formula where he said he thinks it could be as high as 85% failure rate or false positive rate. Yeah. Supposedly there was in Florida, there were some dogs that were being used on a stretch of highway where they put up roadblocks a lot that were like 96% or wrong 96% of the time in the 80s or something like that. Yeah. And I think they said one of the big issues is when they're doing that like random, not like, hey, I pulled someone over, but hey, I'm at the border and there's 300 cars in this line, sniff them all. Right. Because the idea is that most of those cars are going to be free of drugs. Right. But the dogs like looking for drugs, this whole thing is, it's looking for its toy. Yeah. The context

is different for the dog than the average person who's just trying to get through the border. Right. Yeah. Very slippery slope. It is. And then it gets even more slippery when people, when juries convict based on evidence from dogs. So for example, there was a guy named, I think his name was Paul Yell, who was convicted of intentionally burning down his own house, killing one of his kids inside because a police dog detected accelerants. Well, a lab went behind the dog where the dog said there's an accelerant here and tested the area. And in zero of those six, did it find the presence of accelerants? The jury still convicted him because the dog said that the guy had used accelerants, even though the lab couldn't verify

those results. Right. And there was another guy in a state trooper in Florida in the 80s named John Preston, who had a dog named Horace too. And it turned out this guy helped put away like more than a hundred people. And he was basically like a framer for hire. You could bring him along and basically let him know what you were looking for. And he would say that his dog had found whatever evidence you needed. And at least two people were exonerated of murder who were convicted in part by evidence detected by this dog Horace too, who was handled by Preston. And there's two really good documentaries. One is a killing in Canova Beach. Remember when Paul Zahn was on our podcast for the Innocence Project? It's a documentary about that. And

then there's another one called An Innocent Man. It's about a guy named Michael Morton. Both of them feature this guy, John Preston. He's this notorious, infamous dog handler. Even among dog handlers, he's despised because he gave the idea of canine units just a really bad name because everybody's like, well, if this guy's doing it, how many other people are doing it? Right. And then all of a sudden you can't use canines anymore. Right. All right. Well, we'll take one more break and come back and talk some about, well, what are we going to talk about? Let's talk about dogs. On the podcast, paydude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor,

stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the

nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This,

I promise you. Oh god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right. So here's a little stat for you. Um, on a drug sweet,

a canine, they're very efficient. A canine unit, the dog can cover 10 times as much, 10 times quicker to search an area than a human cop could and be way more apt to find the drugs than a cop might. Which again, it makes sense because if, if you can't disguise a shipment of drugs very well from a dog's nose, then you're in trouble. First of all, but also most people are trying to disguise it from humans. Right. Which means you're trying to make it so it doesn't look like drugs. Right. But even if you go to the trouble of disguising the scent, it's still probably not going to work. Yeah. For a well-trained dog. Police dogs are considered, they're kind of treated like regular cops as far as protections and the law goes. Yeah. Like if

you shoot and kill a police dog, they treat it as if you had shot and killed a police officer. Yeah. Guy in Pittsburgh recently got three and a half to seven years for stabbing a police dog to death. Wow. So I guess it's not just like it because if you killed a cop, you'd probably go to the chair. Right. You wouldn't get three to seven years. Right. In Tennessee, they recently passed a law called Aaron's Law in honor of a police dog that's mentioned in here that went down and during a bank robbery, he was killed. The bank, he kept, he kept going after this bank robber that was shooting at him and apparently is credited for distracting the robber enough for the human cops to get the safety and eventually they, the SWAT team killed the bank robber,

but the dog was killed in the process. But that was in 1998 and it wasn't until this year, 2015 that Tennessee passed a law called Aaron's Law that makes it a felony to kill a police dog and intentionally kill a police dog. Wow. I'm surprised it's just not a felony everywhere. Yeah, it is kind of surprising. And then in terms of being treated like regular cops, as far as the use of force, the justification is the same with the dog. And they said, and it says in this article that in court, typically use of force is justified if the suspect is armed, if they have not yet been searched by officers or if they are fleeing a serious crime scene. Right. That's when you can release the hounds. Yeah. And so like we said, usually just the

certificates of training are enough for a court to be like, okay, it's fine that that dog probably didn't overstep its bounds, despite what the guy who's now suing the police department because he got bit by this police dog is saying. Yeah. Because he's a trained dog, a trained European police dog. And the track record doesn't have to come into account. It's just that's enough for most courts to say, nope, excessive force was not used. Yeah. I think we're going to see a lot more stuff about this in the future. False triggers and court rulings. Forensic investigation as a whole is under a microscope like never before and very appropriately. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff that's

still just based on hunches that's being passed off as science in courtrooms and people are being convicted on. Even DNA can be very easily misused when it's not done properly. Yeah. So I think it should be. Agreed. So Chuck, there was a very famous police dog that you may have heard of. Yeah. Rent-in-ten. That's right. Was a German dog who fought for the Kaiser in World War I, but then the guys who were the unit he was a member of abandoned him. So an American said, hey, Pooch, come over here. And Rent-in-ten followed him and ended up becoming a movie star in the United States. How about that? Did you know that? I did not know that. I mean, I knew about Rent-in-ten, but I had no idea that he was a service dog. Yeah. Pretty neat. So there are actually,

there's a group called the Connecticut Police Work Dog Association, and they are involved in honoring and tracking police dogs who died in the line of duty. And a surprising and very disturbing number of police dogs die in the line of duty because they're left in hot cars and forgotten about. What? Yeah. And since 1940, 2,000 dogs, police dogs, have died in the line of duty. Wow. And then since 2007, 29 have died from being left in sweltering cars. Holy cow. Yeah. The reason why is because there are special compartments for them to ride in. Yeah, you can't put them in there with curb. Yeah, that aren't necessarily air conditioned. Oh, wow. Yeah. They need to outfit those 29 Lincoln navigators. Since then. Yeah, that's, that

should not happen. Since 2007. That shouldn't happen once. Yeah. Because it's easily preventable. It sure is. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Yeah, this one was truck full of stacks, sets, and random lots of stuff. I was surprised when I first saw police dogs. I was like, okay, and it was very much more complex and interesting issue than I initially assumed it would be. I agree. If you see a police dog, do not go up and pet it. It's working. Especially if you have drugs on your person. That's right. If you want to know more about police dogs, you can type those words into the search bar at house2forks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this meat pigeon. Hey, guys,

have been hooked on your podcast since the first episode I listened to. I've been hooked on meat pigeons even longer. Never thought I'd have anything worth writing in about. But when I saw Tuesday's episode about pigeons, seemed too coincidental not to. This past weekend, I received a random text from my boss asking if I wanted a pigeon. It's not as odd as you would think because I work in a pet store and I'm known for being an animal lover, animal loving vegan with an affinity for birds. As it turns out in Sumter, South Carolina, where my boss is a pigeon processing plant where they raise utility pigeons for meat and research. My boss very easily caught a lucky escapee as he bathed in the sprinkler unaware that he was being stalked by a resident cat.

So after a few days of rooming with William, the dove I took home, when it was abandoned at my work, the pigeon now has a coop to call his own. Replacing his temporary name of meat pigeon is a proper name Ramseys. I guess William was her boss. Yeah, I'm a little confused. Yeah. The introduction of the name Ramseys makes me think you're probably right. Unless her boss's name Ramseys. No, no, no. The pigeon is the name he gave himself when he became manager. It's a tribute to Ramseys III in pigeon history, but has consequently led to my husband and I frequently singing Nacho Libra quotes to poor Ramseys. I don't remember Ramseys and Nacho Libra, do you? I didn't see that. Hey, you didn't? No. It's cute. The next step is to seek out some

pigeon companionship for Ramseys now. Thank you so much for the greatest podcast ever. I'm hoping there will be a Southeast tour and you'll pass through Columbia, South Carolina. Maybe? Yeah, you might just have to drive to Atlanta. Let's not do it. And that is from Brie Bagnall in Columbia and she's sending pictures of Ramseys in the coop. And he is one cute pigeon. Yeah, there is. Yeah, he is cute. There are some cute pigeons out there I learned. As long as they're not carrier pigeons, they're usually fairly cute. A lot. If you want to get in touch with us and tell us your amazing story about whatever, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.housestuffworks.com

and as always join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housestuffworks.com. We are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot, sexy teen crush

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