In 2010 the federal government gave the Australian Federal Police (AFP) an extra $17.8 million over four years to increase the number of Firearms and Explosive Detector Dogs by 17 dogs.
The first five of these "$1m dogs" graduated in October 2010.
When all 17 graduate, there will be about 50 AFP dogs at Australia’s 11 major airports, as part of a total $200m that the government gave the AFP for aviation policing this year.
The $17.8m is meant to pay for the 17 new dog teams plus six national training positions and a kennel manager at the AFP’s Canine Operations Centre (the manager will undoubtedly be known as Head COC).
That is, as well as their 50-plus handlers, the 50-odd dogs require six full time trainers and a manager! That’s more training staff than an Ausssie Rules or Rugby League team needs.
Handing out their graduation certificates, Minister for Home Affairs Brendan O’Connor said: "These beautiful, but somewhat fearsome, dogs have a highly developed sense of smell and over the past 13 weeks their skills have been honed to detect military and commercial explosives and weapons."
He also said: "This important boost followed the National Security Adviser’s review of aviation security* in light of an attempted terrorist attack on a United States-bound flight on Christmas Day."
Just to be perfectly clear on this, the "attempted terrorist attack" the Minister refers to is the Christmas Day 2009 case known as the "underpants bomber", where a 23-year-old, British (and Australian)-educated** Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, fluffed an attempt to create a fire on a plane using a small amount of plastic explosive sewn into his underpants.
So, apparently, we’ll soon have 50 dogs sniffing the underpants of all users of Australia’s major airports. If you’re travelling over Christmas, get ready for a wet nose in your crotch! Minister O’Connor calls this "non-intrusive screening".
By the way, the best study of detector dog accuracy (a two-year analysis by the NSW Ombudsman) revealed that police dogs were WRONG about 74% of the time.
Neither police nor Customs ever issue formal studies of the accuracy – or rather, inaccuracy – of their detector dogs. The dogs are great for detecting PR and TV news opportunities, but less accurate and effective at their ‘day jobs’.
ENDS
* Criticism of the US security system’s failure to prevent Abdulmutallab from boarding the aircraft in the first place has been widespread; one critic, former FBI counter-terrorism agent Ali Soufan, has said that it (the warnings/alert system) "should have been lighting up like a Christmas tree." President Obama said that "totally unacceptable" systemic and human failures had occurred, Even the underpants bomber’s own father (one of Africa’s richest men) had warned American embassy authorities 30 days earlier that that the young man had been ‘radicalized’ – his name had then been added to the US international watch-list.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umar_Farouk_Abdulmutallab
** From January until July 2009, Abdulmutallab attended a Master’s of International Business degree program at University of Wollongong in Dubai. http://www.smh.com.au/world/wouldbe-bomber-had-terror-conference-20091230-ljym.html