of them unexpected. He was involved with
“a big joint operation with City of London
police — they were looking into a huge
organised drugs gang, so we went to search
for their devices. The dogs led us to a
certain area where there was a device, but
also there was a million pounds worth of
drugs just sat there in food-delivery bags.”
What kind of drugs?
“Everything you can think of.”T
hink “police dog” and you probably
envisage a German shepherd or a
Belgian malinois — something big,
toothy and fierce. Those are the
general purpose (GP) dogs — “the
bitey ones”, as one officer at Keston
calls them (and later I will find out
why). Sniffer dogs are usually labradors,
springer spaniels or cocker spaniels —
traditional gundog retriever breeds that
have what PC French calls “a high drive for
search”. The Met has about 120 sniffers,
trained to detect either explosives, drugs,
firearms, cash or forensic evidence. Forensic
dogs, says Inspector Stephen Biles, the
man in charge at Keston, can help solve
“sexual assaults, stranger rapes — we can
use them to track down traces of semen in
parks”. Others can find murder victims.
“They are trained on human remains,
human scent. They were deployed to
Grenfell and in recent murder cases. They
are also trained on boats, so we can find
bodies in water. When a body is
decomposing in water, gas bubbles will
come up and the dogs can detect that
human scent. In a huge lake, the dogs can
narrow the search down for a dive team.”
Digi-dog training was pioneered in the
US, in Connecticut, in 2015 by an instructor
called Trooper First Class Mike Real —
something of a legend in police dog training
circles. Real had got hold of some labradors
who had flunked out of guide-dog school.
They had been deemed unsuitable for
accompanying blind people because they
were too excitable, too food-obsessed and
too energetic: bad traits for canine carers,
but perfect for would-be police dogs. Real
used food rewards to retrain the bad guide
dogs to sniff out the chemical coating used
on digital storage devices.
His work caught the attention of the FBI
— and of PC Graham Attwood, a police
dog instructor at Devon and Cornwall and
Dorset police. Attwood hooked up with
Real and the FBI, then launched a pilot
scheme in Exeter in 2016 using a labrador
called Rob and a springer spaniel called
Tweed. Rob and Tweed graduated in 2017
to become the UK’s first digi-dogs and the
programme was rolled out nationwide.
Duffee’s digi-dog, Jake, was born and bred
here at Keston. In a far corner of the leafy
15-acre site is a low-rise building with the
signs “Puppy block” and “Breeding unit”
on the gate. “This is the Hilton for puppies,”
says Inspector Biles, a jovial Yorkshireman,as he opens a back door to reveal a brood of
eight-week-old blond and black labrador
puppies scampering around a pen decked
out like a nursery school playground with
plastic tunnels. They tumble and squeak,
wagging their tiny tails furiously as the
gaffer sits gently among them like a
uniformed Doctor Dolittle. “Yes, I do have
the best inspector’s job in the Met,” Biles
says with a grin as a real-life episode of PAW
Patrol plays out around him. Then comes
the acrid smell of puppy pee. “Watch your
step,” says the inspector, the idyll (and his
uniform) mildly sullied.
This cute contingent don’t know it yet
but three of them will go on to become
digi-dogs, three will become drugs dogs
and the seventh, the strongest female, will
become a brood bitch — the matriarch
of future paw patrols. The brood bitches
aren’t operational police dogs — they live
a civilian life with accredited breedersbut are brought to Keston for mating when
they’re in season. The breeder normally
names the puppies, but for one recent
German shepherd litter that honour
was given to Sue Bushby, the partner of
Matt Ratana, a New Zealand-born police
sergeant who was shot dead in a Croydon
custody centre last year. “Matt was a very
good friend of mine,” Biles says. “Sue came
up for a day with the Met commissioner
and met all the pups and named them.”
We walk past empty rooms, one with
“Ratana Litter” still written on the door.
“For their first seven weeks the puppies live
in these heated rooms with mum. We use
CCTV so we don’t have to disturb them,”
Biles says. “Our breeding programmes
are careful to look for that high-drive dog.
All the dogs we get are high-drive.”
What the police call “drive”, you and
I might call overexuberance — that eager-
to-please, in-your-face boisterous energy
that some dogs possess. “We don’t want
a dog who’s going to sit in front of the fire
and go ‘Mmm, lovely day’. We want ones
that, to a member of the public, might
look a little bit manic, because we can train
that — these dogs are constantly looking
to work and they want to be rewarded.
We use spaniels for that reason.”
PC Duffee’s other dog is a springer spaniel
called Max, who was acquired by the force
as he was deemed too jumpy around the
animals on the farm where he worked as
a gundog. Now Max has channelled his
energy into a new purpose: bomb detector.
He swept for explosives during the terror
attacks at London Bridge in 2017 and at the
Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s wedding
at Windsor Castle in 2018. “Harry and
Meghan’s wedding — that was difficult,”
Duffee says, “because I had to search“We want dogs that,
to a member of the
public, might look a little
bit manic, because
we can train that”
Left: pups are bred at the Met’s dog training
centre in Keston, Kent. Below: Inspector
Stephen Biles tends to new labrador puppiesPREVIOUS PAGES: GETTY IMAGES. THESE PAGE: TOM BARNES FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE
The Sunday Times Magazine • 11