Wanted: Crime-fighting puppies to save TT

DEBBIE JACOB

WITH CRIME spiralling out of control, you could say this country has gone to the dogs. That’s a hopeless state of affairs for everyone except for a small section of police officers who believe our best hope of fighting crime lies with dogs. The canine section celebrates its 70th anniversary on September 25, and the milestone brings an unusual request and a rare opportunity.

The Mounted and Canine Branch hopes there are some citizens out there concerned enough about crime to donate six-week to eight-week-old German shepherd or Belgian Malinois puppies to its new puppy programme.

For the last 12 years, I have worked on the canine section’s history where donated dogs have had a special place among police dogs. Sad, joyful and shocking stories emerged from officers’ interviews and the dogs’ secret files.

Many pedigree dogs from Europe and the US have arrived in Trinidad to serve as police dogs, but donated dogs provided some of the most heartfelt stories in canine history. Three dogs in particular stand out for me: Panther, Trigger and Daemon.

On July 9, 1962, Sgt Hamilton Bridgeman and PC Hector “Pee Wee” Lewis took possession of a black Labrador named Punch from an Australian couple who had to return home. When they returned to the police station and Punch tried to attack some officers making fun of him, Lewis renamed him Panther.

Panther, Dog #24, caught fleeing suspects. He captured wanted men in a shack in the Beetham, then a peeping Tom, a cocoa thief and a gunman evading the police.

Next came Trigger, a spry and handsome German shepherd with a black-and-tan coat born on March 26, 1964. His owner, Lystra D Lewis, wrote to the police commissioner on September 29, 1965, offering Trigger, the little brother to police dog Butch. The brothers came from an agreement with the police to mate one of their dogs with Lewis’s dog. The police chose Butch over Trigger for the pick of the litter.

Lewis wrote, “Trigger has grown to be a fine dog, but is very determined and is somewhat aggressive…he is too strong and sometimes difficult for me to manage, nevertheless, I love him.”

The police enlisted Trigger. He thrived with his second handler, Constable James. Trigger chased and caught a thief who snatched a watch from someone’s hand. On March 14, 1972, Trigger pursued a man who had stolen a gun in Sangre Grande and fled about a mile into the Manzanilla forest. The next month, on April 15, 1972, Trigger came to the rescue of a drunk man robbed of $35. He ran down the thief and caught him. He solved the case of a cow killed when it was sliced across its belly with a cutlass. Trigger led the police to the suspect’s house where the bloody cutlass was retrieved. His biggest case came when he caught a man in the act of raping a woman in the Queen’s Park Savannah.

Donated dog Daemon is a legend in canine history. On December 13, 1967, Richard Wallace donated the sable German shepherd when he had to return to England. Daemon’s file said that Wallace requested “...that if for any reason the dog cannot be used for police work, he prefers that the dog be gently put to sleep than be sent off to a home where he might not be properly cared for because of the dog’s aggressive tendencies to strangers.”

Smart and confident, bold and obedient, Daemon never backed down from a confrontation – even when suspects he chased struck him with a pipe or board. In the aftermath of the Black Power Revolution he tracked members of the National Union of Freedom Fighters (NUFF) hiding in the forests, and he was chosen for a special assignment when the Government sent canine police to St Vincent to assist with the arrest of three men who had assassinated Cecil Eric Rawle, the acting attorney general, on May 11, 1973.

That turned out to be the saddest and most baffling case in canine police history. The Mighty Toiler won Road March and Calypso Monarch of St Vincent in 1974 with a calypso about Daemon called The Puppy.

The covid19 pandemic created a shortage of police dogs to purchase everywhere in the world so the canine police are looking to borrow a page from its history and enlist donated dogs, in this case puppies. Someone out there has a Panther, Trigger or Daemon that can help this country to fight crime. Someone can make history.