Police dog Bart, who helped solve several North Holland cases, has retired. He worked for a total of 3.5 years with one of the police officers from the province, with whom he also lived. NH Nieuws looks back on three special moments in their career.
“I was charmed by Bart, he is a cheerful and social dog with an on and off button: he knows when he has to work or not,” says his owner. Police officer M. – who is not given his full name in this article because of his work – had been working as a police officer in North Holland for several years when he decided to become a dog handler.
On March 4, 2019, dog Bart moves in with the agent’s young family at the age of 5.5. “It took some getting used to,” he says. “Bart is with you 24 hours a day. At home, but also at work.“
Important moments
He can picture several situations in which Bart was indispensable. “Lately, police dogs have been portrayed negatively. And that is such a shame, because they are really indispensable in the work we do,” he explains.
And it shows: Bart’s owner sums up a few anecdotes, which show that Bart has proven himself. “At the end of such a shift you were just bouncing with adrenaline,” he says.
NH News lists three important and distinctive moments of M. and police dog Bart, which M. remembers well and will never forget.
Looking for armed robber of taxi driver
“In this case, an attempt was made to rob a taxi driver with a large knife,” says M. “With the Zaandam base team, we tried to find a trace of the perpetrator.”
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What does a police surveillance dog do?
A police surveillance dog is a different kind of trained dog than a police sniffer dog. A sniffer dog searches for drugs, a police surveillance dog searches for ‘fresh human air’. A burglar leaves an air with every step, even on objects that he drops. The police are looking for that smell with the dog.
A trained police surveillance dog can handle commands and therefore knows when to take action.
To bite
The police dog also knows what to do through touch. The police officer holds the dog’s head, so that the dog can bite in a controlled manner, even on a spot of exactly 10 to 15 centimeters. The handler places the dog on the body. The police must always warn that there is a dog, and that they can use it if a suspect does not cooperate.
During emergency call services in the evening and at night, the police dogs are called together with their handler for reports such as robberies, fights, (a lot of) violence or a significant invasion of privacy.
“We continued to patrol that area and tried to get Bart to pick up that fresh human air. Then Bart suddenly dived into the bushes.”
When M. followed him into the dense vegetation, he saw the dog’s behavior suddenly change. “Before I know it, he went looking for the source of the fresh human air in the bushes. Until I heard about five meters from me: ‘Good morning, I’m sitting here’. Of course you’re scared of the monkey acid! Later it turned out that the same person we found was also guilty of four or five attempted robberies.”
Resisting suspect
“In Haarlem, during the curfew period, we received a report of a fight in a house. Other officers were already there and together with a colleague and Bart we also went that way. We knew that the man who was staying there could have a firearm in that house.”
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“My colleague already walked to the house on arrival. I had to stay with the car and get Bart out. Everything seemed under control, but out of nowhere I heard screaming and stumbling noises. ‘Fight’, ‘cooperate’, it sounded. walked into the front yard and saw three tall colleagues going back and forth with a suspect in the middle of the hallway. The suspect was huge and strong.”
“After I gave an official warning, as always, things seemed to get out of hand. The man kept trying to headbutt my colleague. Then I grabbed Bart by the head and let him bite his leg. My colleagues then got the upper hand again. By using the dog I helped them to prevent worse.”
Burglars caught red-handed in home
In Heemstede, Bart and M. were recently called up for a red-handed burglary.
“I entered the house, I do that independently with Bart. ‘This is the police speaking, we have a dog with us’, I then shout, because I have to report that the dog is being used. When I say that, Bart automatically starts to barking. On the first floor, the dog already indicated that there was human air in the house. Upstairs, a bedroom door was closed, which was stopped from the other side.”
“I’m not going to deny that I shed a tear when we took Bart away”
“There Bart and I found two very tough guys, who dared to break into someone else’s house, but who were just about to shit their pants because of the barking and the dog. We caught them red-handed in the house, with the things they were planning to steal were displayed on the bed. They were also on the bodycam. They couldn’t go any further: then you’ll be bouncing with adrenaline afterwards.”
Golden basket
Now that police dog Bart is retired, life looks different for both him and his former handler. For example, M. says that he himself had the choice to keep his dog as a handler, but to his sadness he had no room for it. “I couldn’t offer him the right place, otherwise he would have stayed here, but I still have a dog and a cat and three small children.”
It was certain that the reliable Bart deserves a golden basket. “And we found it with the brother of Bart’s trainer. Last Thursday we brought him there. I’m not going to deny that I shed a tear,” he says. “That’s one of the hardest decisions I’ve had so far, but luckily the new owners keep me updated every now and then.”
