Gary and his daughter recently joined the citizen
police academy. He is now convinced that Tempe
has the finest police department in the country. This is
where he met today's guest speakers, Joe Rouget and
Rick Page.
Joe - A "Stinky" Job
As narcotics detectives one of the things we do is review
reports and submit comments to the county attorney who
decides whether or not to prosecution.
We also respond to citizen calls - People calling in to
complain about a neighbor. We investigate to determine if
the complaints are valid or not. Oftentimes it is just a
disgruntled neighbor, roommate, etc. People have different
motivations for turning people in.
We also do undercover operations. It is similar to what
they do in movies where you dirty up, don't shave...You have to
look like a person that buys or sells drugs.
We will tell our stories to the high school kids and they think
the undercover part is cool. But it is fairly gross to do
too. They hide the drugs in their mouth so they can swallow it if
a cop comes. They spit it in your hand when you buy it.
It is interesting. It is different. But mostly it is
gross and stinky.
When we make an arrest we will cease the property (cars,
money). If the car is worth it, we use it or put it up for
auction and use the money for operations. Money ceased can
be used to purchase virtually anything used to battle the war on
drugs.
We have a tech investigator that handles all of our cameras and
gadgets. We have a high-tech surveillance van. The
pictures are helpful to our investigations when they go to
court.
We investigate strange packages. If a dogs alerts us, we
have reasonable cause to search the package and then we start
our investigation.
Currently, the top drugs would be marijuana, heroin, cocaine
and then methamphetamines.
We usually have a 5-year rotation policy unless you are a
really hard worker. After that you can go back on patrol,
on the street, traffic officer, etc. Rick has been doing
it for 10 years. The street cop is where it all starts.
They are usually the ones that alert us to a possible drug
situations. Being a traffic or street cop isn't as boring
as you might think. They can get burned out quickly so
rotation is good.
Rick - Street Smarts
Drug dealers are not stupid. They have street smarts.
They give kids free drugs but these kids have to sell some to their
friends. The drug dealers get kids addicted this
way. And kids don't like to be alone in their addiction so they try to get
their friends to take drugs with them.
Cody is a female. My first dog was a female black lab.
She was a nut. We rotated her back into the system and now
she is working down in Tucson with a different type of unit.
We got a call about this dog in someone's back yard.
She was about to be euthanized. She was malnourished and
in terribly bad shape. When we saw her we knew we needed
to rescue her, more than put her to work. We took her
to the vet and got her healthy.
We immediately noticed that she was starved for attention and
wanting to play. A good sign of a narc dog is they like to
play. Cody could play fetch all day long. She would
search for that ball for as long as it takes. She has that
play drive. As soon as her red ball comes out nothing else
matters. She is focused on that ball.
Cody stays with Rick 24-7. She is a good demo dog.
She doesn't bite. She is passive and tolerates kids.
Most dog take over 12 weeks to train but Cody was ready to take
the streets after 8 weeks. She is extremely smart.
Dogs remember every area they have been. They remember the
odors. Cody could come back here months from now and
remember everything.
Cody is just a tool. She is no different than an
electronic device that can detect drugs. As an officer, I
still need to have legal access to do a search.
Any dog out there can be trained to find drugs. It just
depends on how strong their play drive is. Labs have a bigger
nose so they can find drugs faster. A smaller dog with a
small nose would take longer and may burn out before they find
the drugs. But mostly we use big dogs because they make us
look macho.
