Specialist Dog Units

Specialist Gog units are not needed in every criminal in every investigation, however, when they are used they are very effective and can have a large effect on the overall success of the case. They can be used in a variety of criminal investigations ranging from fire investigations to murders and kidnappings. The dogs have an excellent sense of smell which makes them a very effective method when searching for missing persons as the dogs can be given an item of clothing that is owned by the person who has went missing and on many occasions the dog has been able to track down the general area at which that person was kept.

Fire Investigation
Specialist dog units are regularly used in fire investigations due to the amount of aid they can provide in the investigation. According to http://www.dogdetectives.com/ these canines otherwise known as Fire Investigation dogs can indicate the 'seat' of a fire which can help to determine whether the fire was purposely caused or whether it was an accident and thereby assist fire investigators by reducing the time spent having to look through debris in order to recover forensic evidence. Multiple dogs are usually brought to a scene, each with a different purpose, these dogs can be trained to do things such as; locate the origin of the fire (where it first started), fuels used to start the fire and also evidence that could be in the scene. If the fire is thought to be a criminal offense, meaning that a person or persons have purposely lit this fire to cause harm or to cover a crime up, then the specialist dog units can work with other units in the fire investigation team such as scenes of crime officers as the dogs can scan the crime scene locating evidence that the scenes of crime officers can then collect and send off to be analysed, as these dogs have much better senses than humans they might be able to find evidence that could have otherwise been missed. Specialist dog units are a very valuable part of the fire investigation team as they have a very important role that could not be done by humans in the same amount of time which means that they dramatically decrease the time it takes to gain information about a fire scene, this is very beneficial to the police as this means that they can find out whether the fire was purposely made which means that they can start the investigation process quicker. This also benefits the scenes of crime officers as the dogs are able to locate evidence that could have took the SOCO team a long team to find which also speeds up their job which results in the evidence being able to be analysed quicker.