KPD's K-9s earn their stripes

Phebus with office Sexton.

Phebus with office Sexton.

Being a K-9 officer is a dangerous position.

"Typically, we're searching for wanted felons. He has to commit a pretty serious crime for us to get involved," explains Officer Darrell Sexton, master certified dog trainer for Knoxville Police Department. "Usually, we respond right after something happens. These guys are usually armed, and we're usually the first officers to encounter that guy. A dog handler's first job is to handle the dog. So, our attention is focused on that."

Sexton's epiphany about the relationship forged between an officer and his dog came at the hands of a crazed, drug-addled suspect he and his K-9 at the time, a Malinois named "Phebus," had tracked into a building. The berserk man was impervious to pain and so enraged that he not only repeatedly shook Phebus off but severely beat the dog. With Sexton joining the fray, all three of them went around and around in an increasingly bloody tornado until the suspect was finally subdued.

Sexton recalls how even though Phebus was beaten severely, when the suspect turned on Sexton, Phebus rallied and went on the attack.

"When you're in a fight like that, you need to know somebody's got your back. If it had been me, by myself, fighting this guy, I would have had to shoot him. After that day, I knew there was nothing that dog wouldn't do for me."

It's not uncommon for dogs and handlers to get hurt or killed in the line of duty, though nothing serious is on record for KPD's dogs except for an injury during a building search. There are vests available for dogs, but they limit the very asset the dog brings to the job - speed and agility - and can overheat them.

"We depend on good tactics to stay safe. And backup officers, who hopefully have been keeping up.

"I grew up with dogs. I always had them," Sexton says, explaining how he naturally gravitated toward professional canine work. "When I got out of the Army, I wanted to get into law enforcement and do one of two things: work narcotics and work with dogs."

Knoxville police have used dogs to varying degrees since the 19th century, but there was nothing systematic until early in the 20th century when a police chief kept and trained his own dogs for tracking and patrolling. Sexton believes the decline of police dogs after the 1960s, especially in Southern cities, may have been from bad images of dogs attacking Civil Rights demonstrators.

The first official KPD K-9 kennel was built in the ‘80s, representing new appreciation of the utility they offer law enforcement.

Sexton relates how "you didn't see dogs being used for apprehension (as opposed to simple tracking) until after World War I. This was a direct result of American soldiers seeing how European armies and police forces used them for guard duties and other assignments. Holland, Germany, Belgium - in those countries, dogs were actually going out on patrol."

Though he had been a sergeant in Florida, Sexton started with KPD as a handler. Through advanced training, he has become the department's Certified Master Canine Training Officer. He is not the first to hold that position, but, on his watch, KPD has reached the level where dog training could be done here. The department buys "green" (one year to 18-month-old) dogs from a North Carolina vendor who obtains them from brokers in Europe.

"We use a ‘sleeve' to test their bite - to see how much courage they have - we'll test their hunting ability. The dogs also have to be able to adjust to different environments - like running on slick floors - and learn to ignore distractions like loud noises ... you can't tell how they're going to turn out until they mature a little," Sexton elaborates.

In the past, dogs were only expected to handle one task. Bloodhounds did the tracking; patrol dogs did apprehension and protection. Dogs were trained to detect either narcotics or explosives. Modern police departments have to be more cost-effective so dogs are taught more than one job. "Currently in the department, we have 10 dual-purpose dogs. Around the ‘80s, you started seeing more dogs trained for two jobs - patrolling and narcotics detection." KPD's only single purpose dog is "Bunky," a Black Labrador Retriever assigned to Explosive Ordnance Detection (EOD).

Adding EOD dogs to the K-9 roster came when security issues heightened in post-9/11 years. The department's EOD dogs worked with Federal agents to routinely inspect flights from McGhee-Tyson Airport bound for Washington, D.C. The day before Officer Sexton was interviewed, Officer Craig Anders and Bunky were called to Anderson County to search the home of the suspect in the shooting of two Inskip Elementary School administrators.

When dogs are retired, KPD officers generally have the option to take the dog home to live out its final years with their families. To some extent, it depends on the dog's personality - can it leave the stresses of police work and settle into life as a pet?

"I have a retired dog at home that I chose to keep. Not all these dogs have been socialized in that way, so you have to be careful about that choice. Phebus was all business when he was at work and completely different at home. My daughter, who's 8, grew up with him. She can take him out of his kennel, and he'll let her boss him around. I can go out in the yard with them, and now he completely ignores me and follows her around."

"Braaf!" Tasja's Story

Office Pete Franzen with Tasja

"Zit!" ("Sit/Heel/Stand Down!")

"Foei!" [pronounced "foo-ey!"] ("No/Bad dog!")

"Stellen!" ("Attack!")

"Hopp!" ("Jump!")

These are Dutch commands Officer Pete Franzen used with his long-time partner, Tasja, a Malinois whose long service to KPD's K-9 Unit came close to a tragic ending due to a diagnosis of breast cancer in 2006.

When asked for some insights into the dynamic of a human and canine patrol team - specifically whether officers ever perceive the dog as a type of weapon - Franzen offers this correction: "They are an apprehension tool - a highly-trained one, a living, breathing one, not a weapon."

Inevitably - necessarily, perhaps - the connection between an officer and his dog becomes an extension of the cliché: a boy and his dog. "These dogs are family. We spend more time with them than anyone else. That dog's in your back seat for nine and a half hours a day," Franzen says. "There's an old adage among police dog handlers that ‘the dummy end of the leash is the one the handler is on.'"

Franzen is a bit wistful when he talks about his tour of duty with an extraordinary partner. "Tasja made me look good for six years!"

"A lot of agencies would not have the money - or the inclination - to opt for the treatment, but Knoxville did, in hopes she'd be able to come back and work. After the surgeries and the chemo, she did."

Tasja not only survived against all odds - chemo can be its own death sentence for dogs - but returned to service for two additional years before retiring this past January, paying back her vet bills with 70 arrests, four vehicle seizures and the confiscation of $11,000.

After hearing Tasja's story, there's nothing left to say but:

"Braaf!" ("Good dog!")

The Bloodhound Gang

Knoxville Police Department's K-9 Unit includes a Search and Rescue (SAR) division which can call upon a variety of resources from horses to helicopters - to hounds.

Knoxville Police Department's "Bloodhound Unit," which is a volunteer-run Search and Rescue unit.

The volunteer-run "Bloodhound Unit" is on call to help find civilians - such as lost children and hikers, Alzheimer's patients and other missing persons.

There's a reason why Search and Recovery (SAR) tends to use bloodhounds just as police K-9 patrols rely on various European shepherd breeds. One was bred for hunting, the other for sentry work. It's like the difference between a farmer and a soldier.

"SAR dogs are, for the most part, looking for people who want to be found. KPD dogs are looking for people who do not want to be found," observes Officer Pete Franzen.

Officer Darrell Sexton, KPD's master certified dog trainer, believes one key difference between "other" dogs and bloodhounds is the latter's sheer love of hunting, whereas most other police dogs are essentially working for a reward, whether it's a pat on the head, a treat or a toy. "Tracking IS their reward," he emphasizes.

Sgt. John Kiely coordinates the SAR team and its pack of purebred bloodhounds owned by volunteers based in Union County. The team includes Union County Deputy Candy Stooksbury, who handles "Cletus."

Cletus takes a whiff of a toboggan dropped by Sgt. Kiely's stepson, Brodey, and finds the boy a few minutes later hiding in one of the dozens of miniature buildings at Safety City, a children's educational facility operated by KPD. Cletus' supercomputer nose detects molecular traces of the boy. This, Stooksbury believes, is the singular area where the bloodhound excels. "They can distinguish the scent of one person out of a crowd and focus on that one person-your scent is like a fingerprint to them," she says. "They can even tell twins apart."

Cletus' handler claims that he singled out a target person on a windy, cold downtown "Jingle Bell Run" from among scores of runners. He has, as one KPD officer put it, a resumé "as long as your arm." He made his first bust on a "bail-and-run" when he was only a year old. He's been on the job ever since and is now 12. Stooksbury hopes to get another young Cletus by breeding him with Lucy and Molly, also members of the gang. Scampering along behind Cletus is "McGhee," a black and tan bloodhound puppy who is only three months old. His training begins by following and watching the big dog.

With McGhee on his heels, Cletus triangulates Brodey's scent trail until he finds the shivering boy, crouching in a corner of one of Safety City's buildings. And with the familiar hound-dog aria: "aaaahhhh-ROOOooooo," Cletus once again has his reward.

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