Route and Paths

[mike]

Still doesn't amount to evidence ......

By that logic I should talk to all those people who have had lottery wins to find out how effective it is to play the lottery !

It is human nature to suffer from confirmation bias - we all tend to look for reasons to back up our own belief. What we don't look for is any reason or evidence that our beliefs do not stand up. (Doubly so, I expect in the police service where you are searching for evidence to convict - let the defence find evidence to the contrary)

One example I gave was that of false positives. A search dog indicates on an area - the handler reports this to the search manager. If it was later found the person went through that area, both the handler and search manager remember this incident and use it to back up their belief in search dogs. What they do not remember is the 10 times the dog has indicated on an area that has turned out to be nothing.

But anyway - that all moves away from the question in hand about R&Ps.

PS Thank for the contact. Should I ever get around to doing some work - I will need all the assistance I can get. (Maybe I should stop antagonising you all then )

i give up, or are you trying to wind me up. 22yrs work obviously counts for nothing compared to your hands on experiance and skill.

[tony & spud]

Hi Robert,

I'm a bit confused by your comment below.....


'What they do not remember is the 10 times the dog has indicated on an area that has turned out to be nothing.'

....unless one is working a trailing/tracking dog ( who has accessed a scent article from the Misper) , as I understand it, our dogs are trained to 'indicate' on any 'recent human scent'.

With this in mind how is anyone able to quantify the dogs indication as 'nothing' ?

Tony

[Robert Bradley]

You're right Tony, bad wording on my part.

Without being able to communicate with the dog, there is no way for a handler or search manager to tell if that indication is significant to the search or not.

As you say it only indicates recent human scent - when I said nothing perhaps I should of said something along the lines of 10 times the dog indicated on a scent irrelavant to the search. It is the same as for foot searchers and clues - they will remember the one clue they found that lead to the misper, but forget the 10 times they found a clue totally irrelevant to the search.

[Pete]

To add a bit more to this and what Daryl said, perhaps the next UKLSI weekend a few searches could be organised under test conditions to test foot vs. dog to get some definative results.

Pete.

[mike]

can i bring my police dog out of retirement if Mr Bradley's hiding.

[Robert Bradley]

I would love to get some useful data on search efficiency and at some point in the future I will take people up on their offer to assist in doing this.

UKLSI did offer to do a similar thing last year at their search conference - unfortunately they were let down by the individuals who had previously stated that they would help. I don't know the actual details as I was only assisting in the experiment design and it is always pointless revisiting these things but there may be a reluctance for UKLSI to try this again because of this.

Having said that, however, ALSAR has stated its intention to "take over" running a lowland search conference from next year and with its close links to ALSAR, LSDogs would be in a position to co-host such an event and this would seem an ideal venture for a first conference.

Going back to the R&P issue, however, I can't think of a single experiment that would disprove my initial standpoint - unless we suddenly found that foot searchers and dog searchers achieved similar results for area searches (I think this is highly unlikely though!)

Oh and Mike - I'm afraid you'd have to join the very long queue of people I've managed to piss off over the years in search

[mike]

Robert wrote
Oh and Mike - I'm afraid you'd have to join the very long queue of people I've managed to piss off over the years in search


Robert you've not pissed me off i just enjoy the fact that forums like this give everyone the chance to air their views.

I dont know what you do for a living but being in the police I have to put up with people who seem to decide on the answer first then make the facts and figures work in the favour of their answer.
local / regional and national crime statistics are a prime example, they are a crime in themselves.
So unfortunately I tend to work with what I know and have seen to be the truth not what my boss's and the pratts in Government want the public to believe.

forums are good for constructive discussion and helping people who may not yet be able to see the light
know what I mean

Mike

[Robert Bradley]

Mike,

I'm glad I haven't caused offence - this time anyway.

As I said before, I'm always happy to be found wrong - but in this instance I'M RIGHT !!

No, but seriously - dogs are an excellent search resource (despite the lack of the sort of evidence I like). That is why I have still to be persuaded that using them for route and paths is a good use of search resource; better to put them into open areas where their strengths lie and let ten-a-penny foot searchers do the R&Ps. And, if you agree with that, then the next question is why confuse easily confused search managers and PolSAs with a R&P assessment for dog teams?

Now you're going to tell me you're a PolSA or search manager as well, aren't you !?

[Daryl]

I would say that the level of detection on a R&P would be the same for a Foot Search Team as a Dog Search Team, the only advantage to using a K9 is that they can do it quicker (No need to trip over the undergrowth either side of the track!).

With regard to areas you are using the term 'Open Area' a lot. I would say the same for this type of area as the R&P. The level of detection would be the same, however the speed of the K9 should normally be quicker.

Complex areas or heavily wooded areas are where I believe the K9 excels over the other types of resource previously stated.

[mike]

Robert wrote
Now you're going to tell me you're a PolSA or search manager as well, aren't you !?

No I'm not a POLSA or a rural search manager,

I was one of the instructors at Chatham Dean though, it was part of job to teach on the POLSA courses, that was in the early 90's whilst living down south.

mike