A new police canine at the Alpharetta Department of Public Safety will not be chasing suspects or sniffing out drugs for the K-9 Unit.
Instead, police will bring Scout, a one-year-old beagle mix, to interviews to calm traumatized victims and witnesses.
Scout is a therapy dog donated through a comfort dog program at the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office in Florida.
“Generally, we’re going to use Scout for traumatic interviews; anytime a victim is attempting to disclose what happened to them,” said Alpharetta police spokesman Lt. Andrew Splawn.
Credit: Courtesy Alpharetta Department of Public Safety
Credit: Courtesy Alpharetta Department of Public Safety
Splawn said Scout is playful and had a “substantial calming effect” during a recent police interview with a child who was a victim of a crime.
Scout was donated by the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office where his handler Alpharetta Det. Caitlin Lawrence attended a 40-hour course with him last December. Lawrence receives additional training with Scout each month, Splawn said.
The Florida course is an extension of Paws and Stripes, an eight-week program at the Brevard sheriff’s office in which jail inmates train dogs from the local animal shelter in basic obedience, hand signals and voice commands.
Some dogs from that program are then selected for the law enforcement training, according to the Sheriff’s Office website.
Credit: Courtesy Alpharetta Department of Public Safety
Credit: Courtesy Alpharetta Department of Public Safety
Lawrence pitched the idea of a therapy dog to police command after learning about Brevard’s program, Splawn said, adding that research shows a higher rate of disclosures of crimes in children’s cases when a therapy dog is present (82%) compared to when one is not present (34%).
The information that police are able to obtain through use of therapy dogs help with the investigation and prosecution, Splawn added.
“We’re pretty fortunate here in Alpharetta that we don’t have high crime but Alpharetta is not immune to it,” he said. “And we do recognize that we’re going to have adults and children who are victims of some traumatic stuff.”
Alpharetta police plan to have only one therapy dog for about two years and will look at the data and results before acquiring a second dog, Splawn said.
