Speaker 1: She trailed actually to the suspects ours. She did go
Speaker 1: by a trash can. The victim's purse was in the
Speaker 1: trash can, which corroborated the trail, and then she went
Speaker 1: to the suspects house where he was being with his
Speaker 1: parents and did happen to be on parole as a
Speaker 1: violent sex offender.
Speaker 2: The dog took you straight to the perpetrator and the
Speaker 2: police went through the door and arrested him. I'm Andrew
Speaker 2: Rule Business Life and Crimes. Today we have a very
Speaker 2: special guest on Life and Crimes Doctor to use her
Speaker 2: real title Kobe Webb and Doctor Kobe Webb is in Bend, Oregon,
Speaker 2: just north of California, where she has spent most of
Speaker 2: her working life. Doctor Webb, alias Captain Webb, was a
Speaker 2: senior police officer in the Riverside County Sheriff's Department for
Speaker 2: more than twenty five years. She retired fairly recently, but
Speaker 2: she made her name in police work in various ways,
Speaker 2: but mostly as a trainer and handler of specialist sent dogs,
Speaker 2: dogs that can trail people or in fact trail anything
Speaker 2: I think, And although she nowadays trains many other dogs
Speaker 2: for other purposes. For many years she made her name
Speaker 2: in California by training bloodhounds to do wonderful things like
Speaker 2: find lost children, lost old people who might have dementia,
Speaker 2: and also to trail fugitives and criminals. Welcome to life
Speaker 2: and Crimes, Kobe. We're going to call you Kobe rather
Speaker 2: than doctor Webb because we're fairly casual. Here. How's things
Speaker 2: in Bend, Oregon.
Speaker 1: It's wonderful. It's a great place to retire. From California.
Speaker 1: It's a light slower peace.
Speaker 2: Tell me, is that where you grew up? You came
Speaker 2: from Oregon originally?
Speaker 1: Yes, I was born in Oregon and grew up in Oregon,
Speaker 1: and then I went down to southern California with my
Speaker 1: mom right and in high school and after graduating, I
Speaker 1: went into college there at the local community college before
Speaker 1: continuing my education, but I went into law enforcement.
Speaker 2: I see. And you formed an attachment to dogs and
Speaker 2: learned about training dogs quite early in life. Is that right?
Speaker 2: From preps? Your grandfather?
Speaker 1: My family, My grandfather worked dogs. My dad also had dogs.
Speaker 1: We've always and my mom we've always had dogs.
Speaker 2: Right, So you grew up with dogs. And in the
Speaker 2: United States, quite a lot of people associated with hunting
Speaker 2: have variations on hound dogs, variations of the bloodhound breed,
Speaker 2: and you were familiar with those and with field labradors
Speaker 2: and others when you were young. Is that right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, not the bloodhounds until later, yep. But I'm not
Speaker 1: in favor of only the bloodhound. I'm in favor of
Speaker 1: dogs with the drive.
Speaker 2: Two hunts, that's the big thing. They're working instinct. Now, Kobe,
Speaker 2: you didn't join the Riverside Sheriff's Department immediately. You actually
Speaker 2: joined a local police force first, did you not.
Speaker 1: Yes, I joined with Palm Springs Police Department first, and
Speaker 1: then I went to Riverside County Sheriff's Department, a larger
Speaker 1: department with the ultimate goal of always being a canine hamber.
Speaker 2: I see. And how soon before you got to use
Speaker 2: dogs in your job as a deputy sheriff. Is that
Speaker 2: what your title was then?
Speaker 1: Yes, So as a deputy first you have to know
Speaker 1: that job, that position, and then when you want a
Speaker 1: special team, then you tested, then you're selected, and then
Speaker 1: it usually takes about five years before you go to
Speaker 1: a special team.
Speaker 2: And the early days, what sort of dogs were you
Speaker 2: handling at Riverside.
Speaker 1: County At Riverside County I started the bloodhound program. However,
Speaker 1: I was a patrol dog handler. I worked malawized shepherds.
Speaker 1: I had four patrol docs out the department, and then
Speaker 1: also I started the department's bloodhound program, right.
Speaker 2: And is it true to say that before your intervention
Speaker 2: or your innovation, that bloodhounds had not been used in
Speaker 2: California as much as they had in the Eastern States?
Speaker 2: And is it true that you went to the East
Speaker 2: and learned from older police who had used bloodhounds in
Speaker 2: the past in order to bring that knowledge back to California.
Speaker 1: There were bloodhounds in California. Hammler's had owned the dogs.
Speaker 1: Were trying to start up programs and trying to get
Speaker 1: their agent Seeds to be a full time position. I
Speaker 1: had the permission with my agency, which was great for
Speaker 1: Innovation to be supportive of me when I brought the
Speaker 1: proposal of adding a bloodhound due to all the missing
Speaker 1: people we were having in the desert area, which is
Speaker 1: a tourist area, Palm Desert, and that's where I proposed
Speaker 1: the bloodhound, which was sent specific to follow that one
Speaker 1: person sent to help our agency kind of lower some
Speaker 1: of the time we were searching for missing people especially
Speaker 1: with dementia. And once I had that approval, I had
Speaker 1: to learn go find out about the bloodhounds, where to
Speaker 1: get a bloodhound, a working line, and then I have
Speaker 1: the support once I got it trained, and I did
Speaker 1: go back east. I went to Colorado and also back years.
Speaker 1: And when I did that and brought back the dog
Speaker 1: with the foundation, the department said, prove that it's reliable
Speaker 1: in our set and needed and they gave me the calls,
Speaker 1: which was wonderful to show that the dog can meet
Speaker 1: those criterias and we were successful on that where now
Speaker 1: we had a full sorely full time bloodhound units.
Speaker 2: Right, So tell us about that early time you had
Speaker 2: some success. I take it with finding old people who
Speaker 2: were lost and possibly children who were lost. And along
Speaker 2: the way, of course, your dogs were getting or your
Speaker 2: hounds were getting the sort of skills they needed to
Speaker 2: follow anybody that you set them after sent and therefore
Speaker 2: they could be used to find fugitives. I think one
Speaker 2: of your early dogs, perhaps not quite your first one,
Speaker 2: but perhaps one of your more famous hounds was a
Speaker 2: bloodhoum bitch called Meggie Might.
Speaker 1: That's correct. So even at the early stages, I did
Speaker 1: track criminals also, yep, it would not be like homicide suspects,
Speaker 1: but it was burglars, not as high profile crimes, just
Speaker 1: to be able to show that the dog was an
Speaker 1: asset and that it was reliable. And so we did
Speaker 1: do missing people and criminal trucks at the beginning. And
Speaker 1: then yes, Maggie was the one, the first bloodhoun I started.
Speaker 1: She had an accident and passed away early, and I
Speaker 1: had Maggie in training, and Maggie was the one that
Speaker 1: really stepped up, and I was able to prove the
Speaker 1: need for the dogs, especially saving time in resources with
Speaker 1: direction to travel, and then we'd be able to locate
Speaker 1: missing persons or suspects. But it was just a tool.
Speaker 1: She's not the one thing that solves prime solely. It's
Speaker 1: a tool.
Speaker 2: True, I think Maggie made, from what I've read, was
Speaker 2: instrumental in tracking in a fairly wonderful way a six killer.
Speaker 2: Early in those days, I think two and one or
Speaker 2: two thousand and two, a fellow called Jackson, Is that true?
Speaker 2: What was that story?
Speaker 1: On that particular case? I was called upon. It was
Speaker 1: a subject that was accused of attacking elderly women and violently,
Speaker 1: and I was called upon to see if I could
Speaker 1: track him after he just committed another event, and they
Speaker 1: just wanted to know the direction of travel of him
Speaker 1: coming in and out of this neighborhood so that we
Speaker 1: could do a surveillance and get more investigative leads. And
Speaker 1: Maggie ended up trailing on that case. As she trailed
Speaker 1: actually to the suspect's house, she did go buy a
Speaker 1: trash can. The victim's purse was in the trash can,
Speaker 1: which corroborated the trail, and then she went to the
Speaker 1: suspect's house where he was getting with his parents and
Speaker 1: did happen to be on parole as a violent sex offender.
Speaker 1: And the whole case opened up when we didn't even
Speaker 1: expect it to either. We truly thought we were just
Speaker 1: going to get how he's entering the neighborhood in exiting.
Speaker 2: But the dog, in its wisdom or its noos, you better,
Speaker 2: took you straight to the perpetrata and the police went
Speaker 2: through the door and arrested him and away he went
Speaker 2: to jail.
Speaker 1: Eventually, well there was evidence there he didn't have time
Speaker 1: to destroy. The last thing I think kind of expected
Speaker 1: was the dog to be showing up early in the
Speaker 1: morning and I think the big thing with the tracking dogs,
Speaker 1: we had no information where who our suspect was, where
Speaker 1: he was staying. Like I said, we were just trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how he entered the neighborhood and then
Speaker 1: we're out of house, which kind of surprised even us.
Speaker 1: And that really kind of blew up the whole case
Speaker 1: in a sense, and a good way of having that
Speaker 1: evidence inside not destroyed and being able to go to trial.
Speaker 2: Just to be clear, this offender, Jackson, he'd murdered one
Speaker 2: old lady and had riped at least one other. That's true,
Speaker 2: isn't it.
Speaker 1: That's what he was accused of.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, And I have.
Speaker 1: Not the investigator. I was solely only the dog handler,
Speaker 1: which makes it unbiased. I just deployed the dog and
Speaker 1: work the dog and do not always know all the
Speaker 1: facts of the case because I don't want to be
Speaker 1: biased in the deployment of the dog.
Speaker 2: Okay, Now, I think your success or Maggie May's success
Speaker 2: in that case meant that the FBI reached out to you,
Speaker 2: I think the following year, within a matter of months,
Speaker 2: because they had a very serious I think a kidnapping
Speaker 2: and they needed some help and they reached out to
Speaker 2: you and Maggie mate your dog, Maggie, I think you
Speaker 2: gave her the scent of the suspected perpetrator offender. Is
Speaker 2: that right?
Speaker 1: We trailed from the house where the victim was kidnapped
Speaker 1: by the suspect. It was the victim's house, and we
Speaker 1: had a scent article of a potential suspect who I
Speaker 1: didn't know. They gave me the sen item and they said,
Speaker 1: we want to know if there's a trail from the
Speaker 1: house with this sen item, and that's where the dog
Speaker 1: did take a track and did go to the location
Speaker 1: of a cabin, and that's where we entered the cabin
Speaker 1: under exigent circumstances, thinking the victim might possibly still be alive. Ye,
Speaker 1: and found evidence there in the cabin, such as there
Speaker 1: was duct tape, There was numerous other items in the cabin,
Speaker 1: and we gave Maggie break. We shut her down. A
Speaker 1: little bit later, we started her back up on the
Speaker 1: victim scent.
Speaker 2: You switched scents, yep, Yes.
Speaker 1: We changed scents and we gave her the victim scent
Speaker 1: in that area, and that's where she tracked down a
Speaker 1: hill and gave a proximity alert in that area, there
Speaker 1: was snow. We did not see our victim anywhere, and
Speaker 1: that's when FBI was later called and their dog did
Speaker 1: find the grave right underneath the snowpack, and that the
Speaker 1: deceased victim was inside there and identified.
Speaker 2: An astonishing tile of a tile of two dogs, two hounds.
Speaker 2: But Maggie May was certainly one of your better bloodhounds,
Speaker 2: but not the only one. You handled several and you
Speaker 2: trained many more, I believe, and then you showed other
Speaker 2: people how to train bloodhounds to do do this important
Speaker 2: work and other important work. Well, can you recall some
Speaker 2: of the cases that stick in your memory and some
Speaker 2: of the jobs you have helped with, both in California
Speaker 2: and elsewhere. I think you went overseas at one time.
Speaker 1: Yes, I have started up programs and other agencies. As
Speaker 1: for Maggie Alan, yes, she was wonderful. She worked other kidnapping.
Speaker 1: She also worked Samantha running kidnapping, which is very dear
Speaker 1: to my heart because it was a very difficult trail.
Speaker 1: And she did help with direction of travel and where
Speaker 1: we were able to gather more evidence, just for providing
Speaker 1: that was significant. Where I'm still in contact with the
Speaker 1: mother of Samantha that was kidnapped and murder things like that,
Speaker 1: so you definitely get that relationship. And then yes, I
Speaker 1: have traveled internationally working bloodhounds. However, I still have to
Speaker 1: say it's not the breed. I have to always reinforce
Speaker 1: that it's since specific. It's really the driver of the dog,
Speaker 1: and that the dogs hunt skill to want to be
Speaker 1: able to track and understand since specific. So I just
Speaker 1: happened to be known for the bloodhounds. I was successful
Speaker 1: with the bloodhounds, and now that's where I still train them.
Speaker 1: But I do work with all breeds.
Speaker 2: And within every breed, tell me if this is right.
Speaker 2: With every breed, you will find individuals that are good
Speaker 2: at certain tasks and many other individuals that are not.
Speaker 2: And I think anybody that breeds sheep dogs or race
Speaker 2: horses or anything else will agree with that proposition. Do
Speaker 2: you find that in your experience you've found certain bloodlines
Speaker 2: of bloodhounds and other breeds that are particularly good because
Speaker 2: they are well focused on the job, they want to work,
Speaker 2: they want to please the handler, and perhaps there are
Speaker 2: other bloodlines that are not as successful as those ones.
Speaker 1: Yes, I do have working line breeders that I do
Speaker 1: work with when I'm looking for the dogs, do do
Speaker 1: their past success and the success of the prior letter
Speaker 1: meads that I watch and that I get to. Now
Speaker 1: I do favor them because the genetics I kind of
Speaker 1: know what I'm dealing with, so I do have that
Speaker 1: that I do prefer.
Speaker 2: Hypothetically, if someone from overseas, from Australia or New Zealand,
Speaker 2: or Switzerland or Greenland came to you and said, we
Speaker 2: really like what you're doing, we need to get track
Speaker 2: of dogs to do exactly what you do with them
Speaker 2: in the States, you could point to two or three
Speaker 2: breeders in the States with genetics that would be superior.
Speaker 1: Well, it's just been more of success rate. That's really
Speaker 1: what I look at is that the dog success where
Speaker 1: the dog's been deployed, the other dogs related and that success.
Speaker 1: So we actually almost fight behind the list for the
Speaker 1: dog to be pick of the litter. And yes, that
Speaker 1: is what I do. Still to this day. I get
Speaker 1: very picky. I want I want to be the number
Speaker 1: one to pick the best pub that I believe with
Speaker 1: what I'm seeing to be that working dog. So yes,
Speaker 1: I did work with New York State Place, Maryland State Place,
Speaker 1: many years of using the since specific filling dogs. They
Speaker 1: do both use the bloodhounds, and I did follow their models.
Speaker 2: We'll put a hypothetical to you. The LAPD. We've all
Speaker 2: heard of it. It's a famous police force, Los Angeles
Speaker 2: Police Department. It now has its own unit or track
Speaker 2: a dog unit, and I think you might have helped
Speaker 2: set that up. Is that right?
Speaker 1: Yes, I did help them start their program, help them
Speaker 1: start with their breeders. They did the same methods as
Speaker 1: I do, and they've been very, very successful. I actually
Speaker 1: feel more like Grandma now when I get to watch
Speaker 1: all these dogs and handlers doing excellent work with their
Speaker 1: dogs and finding individuals. I do like when they find
Speaker 1: the missing. That's my favorite. And then also I do
Speaker 1: like the suspects being captured because a lot of times
Speaker 1: it's closure for families.
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, finding lost children must be especially wonderful.
Speaker 1: The children. A lot of times, if they're autistic anything
Speaker 1: like that, they're not even aware that they're lost. It's
Speaker 1: very heartwarming, gratifying to know that they're safe and back home,
Speaker 1: and the bloodhounds not intimidating. But you know that that's
Speaker 1: the nice thing. In the United States, we have McGrath,
Speaker 1: which is our crime fighter dog and it's a bloodhound.
Speaker 1: So you put that together where there's cartoons and everything
Speaker 1: with McGrath, and it's nice when the dog finds that
Speaker 1: missing child. But I'm still gonna say again reinforcing you know,
Speaker 1: some of the best dogs I've seen. One of the
Speaker 1: best dogs truly was a Melwaw, one of the best
Speaker 1: trailing dogs I saw. So I always have to go
Speaker 1: back to it's more about being sent specific and training
Speaker 1: with that and that drive of that dog been necessarily
Speaker 1: the breed. Even though we've been successful with that breed,
Speaker 1: it still goes down to that dog's dry that determines everything,
Speaker 1: because you know, just because you see a bloodhound, I've
Speaker 1: seen some that just want a hacking chair and hang out.
Speaker 1: So it really goes back to that dog's drive. That
Speaker 1: is number one. If I have that, we are.
Speaker 2: Set because all dogs, virtually all dogs have the wonderful nose,
Speaker 2: the old factory senses that can be used to trail,
Speaker 2: you know, pick up sense of anything, trail people, trail animals,
Speaker 2: find truffles, do anything. Really providing you can channel that
Speaker 2: ability the way that you can channel it, there is
Speaker 2: some differences they're not between bloodhounds and some other breeds.
Speaker 2: The bloodhound is specifically a scent animal and will not
Speaker 2: be distracted by seeing something. Is that true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we do use the bloodhounds more in the States
Speaker 1: because we have noticed some of our other dogs will
Speaker 1: go visual when they see somebody running, compared to if
Speaker 1: the bloodhound's down, their noses down, they're tracking, They're focused
Speaker 1: on that track and that's the only thing that they
Speaker 1: care about. And we've seen where they can go a
Speaker 1: little bit of a longer distance and a little bit
Speaker 1: on an more of an age trail. But once again,
Speaker 1: it still goes by the dark foundation. It is the
Speaker 1: dark trained for since specific that is the foundation of
Speaker 1: the training.
Speaker 2: Kobe, You've worked in the shop end of policing. You've
Speaker 2: worked on homicides, assisting the coroner's office at Riverside County,
Speaker 2: which of course is out of Los Angeles. It's a
Speaker 2: very big, busy place. There's plenty of crime, plenty of murders.
Speaker 2: Over here in little Old Australia. We've had our share
Speaker 2: of crime recently. One of the more notorious incidents of
Speaker 2: the last year is that an offender shot dead two
Speaker 2: policemen to police officers who were attempting to arrest him
Speaker 2: up in a mountainous country district, not unlike your Oregon,
Speaker 2: to be honest, very similar, high mountain snow, all that stuff.
Speaker 2: This offender, having allegedly shot to police officers dead and
Speaker 2: wounding a third, bolted into the bush, into the woods
Speaker 2: as you might say, and vanished. And although there was
Speaker 2: a massive search conducted by hundreds of officers, helicopters, all
Speaker 2: the technology over many weeks after that, they did not
Speaker 2: find any sight of him. Now I think they're now
Speaker 2: satisfied that probably he has taken his own life, but
Speaker 2: they have never been able to find his body, and
Speaker 2: I think with every passing day it becomes less likely
Speaker 2: that they will find his body. Taken those circumstances as
Speaker 2: I've of at London, this was in late winter hea
Speaker 2: last August, so it was cool, it was damp, it
Speaker 2: was up in the hills. If someone like yourself with
Speaker 2: your dog or dog's hounds had been called into that
Speaker 2: scene that same day. This happened at ten thirty in
Speaker 2: the morning, if you'd turned up there mid afternoon that day,
Speaker 2: what is it do you think a good track of
Speaker 2: dog could have done? At that scene.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not familiar with the case, no, and I
Speaker 1: was not there. The first thing I would have done
Speaker 1: is looked around to see if I could find a
Speaker 1: shoe track or a sin it down that belonged to
Speaker 1: the suspect, and as our agency deploys, would have been
Speaker 1: one of the first resources out there so the scene
Speaker 1: isn't trampled on, so that the scent is preserved, and
Speaker 1: try to locate the trail leaving that scene and give
Speaker 1: direction of travels so that we could put drones or
Speaker 1: helicopter or something in the direction from that scene to
Speaker 1: leap frog and be ahead of us. And our ultimate
Speaker 1: goal is to track locating the subject. If the subject
Speaker 1: got in a car, we would have been done. We
Speaker 1: can't track behind the car, but we could least still
Speaker 1: give direction to travel and know if a car west
Speaker 1: park therea we could give you the area where the
Speaker 1: tire tracks are or other evidence. You just don't know.
Speaker 1: But it is a tool, just one more tool to
Speaker 1: be used. But it has to be one of the
Speaker 1: first tools. It cannot be days later. It can't, it
Speaker 1: would not work at all. It's just one more resource
Speaker 1: to be called upon.
Speaker 2: It's seems that over here. We throw everything at it
Speaker 2: except dogs, because we don't really have the dogs that
Speaker 2: are good enough to trial anybody much the more general
Speaker 2: purpose dogs, and they tend to be attack dogs. What
Speaker 2: they do do after about a month usually is bring
Speaker 2: in cadava dogs to see if they can find a body,
Speaker 2: and they do have those here by then you know,
Speaker 2: it's all a bit late to be catching anyone alive
Speaker 2: and kicking. But as you explain it, you could at
Speaker 2: least point investigators towards one sector to look at and
Speaker 2: eliminate others. You could say, well, this scent went in
Speaker 2: that direction, up that track and headed due north or
Speaker 2: whatever it might be, and it didn't go southeast or west.
Speaker 2: This is what you can do at a crime scene,
Speaker 2: or your dogs can do all.
Speaker 1: That's our goal. Now, it's how we deploy them. We
Speaker 1: don't always need the finish. We need them to do
Speaker 1: the trail. Sometimes it's just to locate evidence. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: just direction of travel, and if the dog is locked
Speaker 1: on the trail, we'll keep going. But we do so
Speaker 1: resources up ahead above the dog because it is that
Speaker 1: team work.
Speaker 2: Yep. Another case, it's a real case, two years ago
Speaker 2: exactly a woman here in a provincial city, on the
Speaker 2: outskirts of a provincial city, went for a jog on
Speaker 2: a Sunday morning into the countryside. She did not come home.
Speaker 2: She vanished. No one knew what, No one knew really
Speaker 2: where she was or where she'd gone exactly. The searches
Speaker 2: were mounted for her, but not using any sort of
Speaker 2: track of dogs, because again we don't really have them,
Speaker 2: and if they do exist, they don't use them. There
Speaker 2: are volunteer dogs, but the police choose not to use them.
Speaker 2: So you know, dozens and hundreds of people go looking
Speaker 2: and tracking through the bush and creating five hundred different
Speaker 2: scent trails, and they found precisely nothing. Again, hypothetically, had
Speaker 2: one of your dogs and handle have been brought into
Speaker 2: that scene on that same Sunday morning, this lady goes
Speaker 2: missing at seven am. If a dog had got there
Speaker 2: by eleven or twelve that day, what scenario could have unfolded.
Speaker 2: The woman's husband could say, well, she always ran that
Speaker 2: way down that road and this is a pair of
Speaker 2: her shoes, so he's a scent A hound could do
Speaker 2: what in those circumstances, Well.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of hurdles there. One of course is
Speaker 1: making sure the syn item is good because even as
Speaker 1: you said, the husband gave the syn items something like
Speaker 1: that as an example, it's now contaminated. So we do
Speaker 1: always try to find a sn item that is the
Speaker 1: individual solely.
Speaker 2: That's a given that we're looking for yep, of course.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and not as many people searching and looking
Speaker 1: because as you said, it disrupts the scene.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: So if we had a good scent item, we do
Speaker 1: try to track the freshest track leaving the scene. Do
Speaker 1: you remember if she continuously runs in this area and
Speaker 1: does various turns from a track, the dog has a
Speaker 1: difficult time because it's specific. So it's what I always say.
Speaker 1: If you're at home and you're leaving your home, you
Speaker 1: go and you check your mouth, you go to your car,
Speaker 1: you go to your neighbors, you're leaving trails all different locations,
Speaker 1: and it's very difficult for the dog. Compared to we've
Speaker 1: been more successful when it's a suspect breaks into a
Speaker 1: home and flees. We have one scent, then one sent in,
Speaker 1: one sent out. It's not contaminated. So if she was
Speaker 1: running in an area that she doesn't run all the time,
Speaker 1: or runs a different path, it's easier for the dog.
Speaker 1: But either way, we have had cases like that. We
Speaker 1: did have one down in San Diego, California, and we
Speaker 1: did use the trailing dogs. It's how quick can you
Speaker 1: call upon the dark? That's number one, sooner the batter,
Speaker 1: and that's sen item and no matter why, you have
Speaker 1: nothing to lose if you call upon right away, and
Speaker 1: if that dark can help it, there's no negative to it.
Speaker 2: That's a very interesting point you make about contamination of
Speaker 2: the sense. If someone's running in the same area continually,
Speaker 2: I guess if they weren't running daily, it might be
Speaker 2: easier because the older sense would have faded a little, I imagine,
Speaker 2: But the dog presumably would be able to stop at
Speaker 2: the point at which the scent stops. The beauty of
Speaker 2: the dog stopping at a particular point, I imagine is
Speaker 2: that then expert forensic officers can look at that small area,
Speaker 2: a relatively tiny area, and look for signs of a struggle,
Speaker 2: look for drops of blood, look for fragments of clothing,
Speaker 2: and perhaps even tire marks or something like that.
Speaker 1: I would already assume that the agency already did those things.
Speaker 1: I really do that you have a missing runner those things.
Speaker 1: I guarantee they were already looking for those resources and
Speaker 1: evidence to corroborate that. But we would still in our
Speaker 1: area if we don't know for sure, we do still
Speaker 1: call the dogs, because once again we have nothing to lose,
Speaker 1: to call the dog and to see what we can get.
Speaker 2: Yes, good point. In another case, here, very recent case,
Speaker 2: a small boy light last year, a small boy on
Speaker 2: an outback sheep station. Now, this is a vast area
Speaker 2: of many square miles of empty country. It's fairly very
Speaker 2: dry and sparse. There's no trees. There's just rocks and
Speaker 2: sand and a few shrubs and salt bush, the sort
Speaker 2: of territory that you would have in the States, perhaps
Speaker 2: in Arizona maybe. And this little boy, four year old boy,
Speaker 2: he vanished from his family's sheep station or sheep ranch
Speaker 2: as you might call it. And for many weeks they
Speaker 2: spent a lot of time and effort searching a vast
Speaker 2: area looking for this child, without really knowing him what
Speaker 2: direction he might have gone, if indeed he had gone anywhere.
Speaker 2: Could a scent dog have done anything in that situation
Speaker 2: to guide the search by perhaps showing that child's scent
Speaker 2: was not outside the perimeter of the garden, not even
Speaker 2: outside the perimeter of the farmyard. Is that a real thing?
Speaker 2: Or am I just get up there?
Speaker 1: Well, there's a couple of things. One, it depends on
Speaker 1: the temperature that that environment is going to be. Number
Speaker 1: one when it comes to the dog. If it's too
Speaker 1: hot and there's extreme weather, wind, heavy wind, anything, because
Speaker 1: I don't know that area, that would definitely not allow
Speaker 1: a dog to work. We have used dogs to see
Speaker 1: if a person's been within a perimeter or exited a perimeter,
Speaker 1: so that we don't keep resources up on that perimeter
Speaker 1: thinking that the subject's still inside. If the dog breaks it,
Speaker 1: then we know that the person's not in that perimeter.
Speaker 1: If a dog doesn't leave, then we know to call
Speaker 1: in other like area search dogs, or we'll call in
Speaker 1: other dogs that can pinpoint. So we do use multiple
Speaker 1: discipline dogs working together. We even do that with apprehension dogs.
Speaker 1: If we're thrilling somebody armed, we'll use a patrol dog
Speaker 1: behind our hound because they have two different jobs, so
Speaker 1: it's the same thing. In a search area, we will
Speaker 1: try to use the hound to give us direction to
Speaker 1: travel or let us know if that person is still
Speaker 1: within or exit it a perimeter and then we'll use
Speaker 1: the other dogs to pinpoint.
Speaker 2: Ah, that is very interesting. And when you say an
Speaker 2: area search dog, these are the dogs that can sniff
Speaker 2: the air around them at head heart and soon deduce
Speaker 2: whether the target person target scent is anywhere in that
Speaker 2: area that can quickly eliminatee rather large search area. Is
Speaker 2: that right correct?
Speaker 1: So we'll use the dog to tell us where to search.
Speaker 1: So for example, that one where I had the kidnapp
Speaker 1: being and I had a proximity alert that my person
Speaker 1: was right there, while the hound cauldnot source it. The
Speaker 1: person was buried. It was a the person was deceased.
Speaker 1: The dog did not know how to pinpoint, so we
Speaker 1: had to use a dog trade for that skill. So
Speaker 1: we work together and that I think that's the key
Speaker 1: to solving anything is using the resources of what dog
Speaker 1: is best for that environment. But we will use a
Speaker 1: dog to tell us a trailing dog that's sent specific
Speaker 1: to tell us where to deploy the other resources.
Speaker 2: Right now, doctor captain, you've got a lot of honorifics.
Speaker 2: It's wonderful. What is your doctorate in?
Speaker 1: As a matter of interest, organizational leadership? I focused on
Speaker 1: officer stressors and lowering those stressors. So with my dissertation
Speaker 1: focused on that, then with my dog background, I now
Speaker 1: work with support canines and using the dogs to help
Speaker 1: victims lower their stress when they come in to report
Speaker 1: a crime or if they've been a victim of an assault.
Speaker 1: Now we use dogs to help with those interviews and
Speaker 1: engagement and imprint them with cortisol odor so that they
Speaker 1: can really help people. So I really enjoy enjoyed that.
Speaker 1: But even yesterday I was training Riverside Counties Trailing Dog
Speaker 1: Team and then today I was working the support canines. AH,
Speaker 1: that a variety.
Speaker 2: So you five years ago, I think you retired from
Speaker 2: active police work to do to go from the shop
Speaker 2: end of police work to the other end, and that
Speaker 2: he's producing dogs that help victims, which must be lovely stuff.
Speaker 2: But still they call on you to train dogs for
Speaker 2: the shop end. It does speak highly of your ability.
Speaker 1: I'm just appreciative that I'm allowed to go and work
Speaker 1: with the dogs, and I really inspected what all the
Speaker 1: handlers are doing and if I can contribute anything, I'm
Speaker 1: more than willing. So for me, even though retired, it
Speaker 1: is always giving back is what I believe in, because
Speaker 1: crime doesn't stop. Missing people don't stop. Just because you
Speaker 1: retire doesn't mean that I should just be sitting on
Speaker 1: my behind receiving my retirement check. I need to keep contributing.
Speaker 2: Good on you. And if there's one message you gave
Speaker 2: us early in the pace, and it's probably worth repeating,
Speaker 2: it is that if you can get dogs involved in
Speaker 2: detecting lost people or fugitives or bad people, the main
Speaker 2: thing is to get them there quickly, early in the case.
Speaker 2: Is that right?
Speaker 1: That's number one. Most of the agencies, the bloodhounds that
Speaker 1: I work with in California, they're full time handlers, and
Speaker 1: that is their job is to be available and to
Speaker 1: be one of the first responders on scene.
Speaker 2: Do you find it hard to believe that a country
Speaker 2: like Australia in the anglosphere tuned into what other countries
Speaker 2: like America and Canada and so on, what they do,
Speaker 2: that none of our state police forces or our federal
Speaker 2: police appear to have anything like highly trained track of dogs,
Speaker 2: specific specialist track of dogs. Is a surprise to you.
Speaker 1: I don't know, so I can't give an opinion. I
Speaker 1: don't know the dogs that are there, I don't know
Speaker 1: the skill set I truly don't know, so I can't
Speaker 1: give an opinion on that. I am familiar with great
Speaker 1: dog work in Australia, so I don't know about the
Speaker 1: trailing dogs the.
Speaker 2: Dog work in Australia by law enforcement or by other groups.
Speaker 1: I have heard about the law enforcement patrol dogs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know a mutual trainer that goes there, and I
Speaker 1: have a respectim and the information he has shared is
Speaker 1: always very impressive.
Speaker 2: Oh that's good. So that we have good police dogs
Speaker 2: here that good at catching bad guys, but not so
Speaker 2: good at finding children. I think perhaps I don't know.
Speaker 1: I have to be fair. I have to be fair
Speaker 1: because I don't.
Speaker 2: Know fair enough. We've got a fair idea. There don't
Speaker 2: seem to be any that can find people that are lost,
Speaker 2: which is extraordinary. Really well, this has been a most
Speaker 2: illuminating discussion, and we're very lucky to track you down
Speaker 2: so to speak, and to get you to talk to us.
Speaker 2: You're very generous. It's quite late where you are and
Speaker 2: you're probably now looking to have your dinner, and so
Speaker 2: we should leave you alone. The listeners of Life and
Speaker 2: Crimes here in Melbourne, Australia. I'm sure delighted to hear
Speaker 2: from you. Thank you, doctor Kobe Webb, former captain in
Speaker 2: the Riverside County Sheriff's Department and one of the pioneers
Speaker 2: on the West coast of the USA of using highly
Speaker 2: trained bloodhounds to do sophisticated police work. Thank you so much,
Speaker 2: Thank you, thanks for listening. Life and Crimes is a
Speaker 2: Sunday Herald Sun production for true crime Australia. Our producer
Speaker 2: is Johnty Burton. For my columns, features and more, go
Speaker 2: to Heroldsun dot com dot au, forward slash andrew rule
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Speaker 2: at news dot com dot au. That is all one
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