IMO, VRDs can be an invaluable asset. Just a couple of weeks ago, they were able to locate the remains of the abducted little French girl (RIP little one) in quite challenging terrain and weather.
As most of us will remember, in the Shannon case the dog correctly alerted to cadaver odour, but for a totally irrelevant reason.
In the debrief below, there is also reference to questions about their reliability and mentions unnamed other cases in which their use "had the potential to cause complications".
As the debrief doesn't elaborate further, there's no way of knowing what was meant by "reliability". Correctly alerting to irrelevant cadaver odour? Alerting to substances or odours indicative of human decomposition within their "training parameters" but which did not involve death?
From the NPIA debrief of the Shannon Matthews case, for anyone interested...
Strategic Debrief
Operation Paris: The Investigation into the Disappearance of Shannon Matthews
• Victim recovery dogs were used to search the homes of significant TIEs
and other priority locations. In all,
9 victim recovery dogs were used from 4 forces, but dogs and handlers are trained to different standards and so some caution was required in deploying them. The deployment of victim recovery dogs was considered to be very useful and West Yorkshire Police have decided to train more of their own.
(...)
Issues for National Consideration
Victim Recovery Dogs
The victim recovery dogs used in this operation were drawn from four different forces. It emerged that each force has its own training and deployment policy and so there is no consistency in what the dogs can do and how it is done. Furthermore, there is no national standard for accrediting dogs and handlers, or record keeping of the success rate they achieve. This makes it difficult for SIOs to interpret the indication that
a dog gives in any given situation and may lead
to the expenditure of large resources in following up an indication from a dog with no way of knowing how reliable that indication was in the first place. ACPO is currently examining this issue due to a number of recent cases where the use of victim recovery dogs has had the potential to cause complications in an enquiry.
The properties that the dogs searched contained a high level of second-hand furniture bought from dwellings where someone had died. This resulted in numerous indications that required further investigation to confirm whether they were connected to the investigation, or to previous owners of the furniture.
The value of these dogs is undoubted, but there is an urgent need to have national policy on their training, accreditation and deployment and better information for SIOs about their use. The NPIA is currently working with the ACPO Strategic Dogs Working Group to resolve these issues. http://library.college.police.uk/docs/npia/Operation-Paris.pdf
