Trackin' a killer in good ol' L.A.
Scent can be used in a number of ways to assist in the investigation of crimes.
The most common method is to take scent from the crime scene and using a bloodhound follow that scent trail to see where it goes. If it leads to a pay phone, the records may be pulled to see who was called. If the trail leads to a house, the occupants can be identified. The dog can tell you if the suspect left the area in a vehicle or on foot. This information gives the investigating officer a place to start.
Scent can also be used to identify a person, much in the manner of a "field show-up", where the dog can pick out a person whose scent matches the scent you are looking for.
Scent can be used to identify a location for matching scent. In this case the investigator believes a house or other location may be linked to the perpetrator...the dog can confirm or deny this.
Finally, scent can be used in a scent line-up. When a suspect is identified, scent can be obtained from him/her and then compared to scent from the crime scene. The dog is given the scent from the crime scene to smell, and then has to pick out a match; if there is one, from a number of scent specimens...this is usually done in a line-up format.
None of these means we have identified your suspect as the one who committed the crime, only that his scent is present on whatever item the scent sample was collected from...there can be a lot of reasons why their scent is there. That is the job of the investigator to figure out.
Bloodhounds have been used by law enforcement since the early 1800's, and yet they are still not widely used. In this day of high tech gadgets, many people have a hard time accepting that a very low tech dog can out perform all your expensive machines, but they can. The following is a partial list of items I have obtained scent from and that my dogs have successfully used to trail and identify the person whose scent was on the item: a cigarette butt, a marijuana cigarette butt, expended shell casing (this is now the most common item I use for scent), window sill where suspect crawled through the window, victim's body (both dead victim from strangulation, and live victim of a rape), pipe bomb fragment, Molatov cocktail fragment (burned), wooden match, ligature, various body fluids, used condom,...it goes on and on. The bottom line is, if they touched it, wore it, or handled it, we can get their scent from it, and once we have their scent we can identify them. Book 'em Dann-0.
Polly, Knight, and Rosie mixin' it up...they work hard and play hard.
USING SCENT
Polly at about 10 weeks
on the day she came home, Halloween, 2000.
She is held by our good friend, Shea, and our next door neighbor, Justin.
