Deputy Chief Adam Palmer played a graphic video of skateboarder Chris Evans smashing a Coast Mountain bus repeatedly with his skateboard, screaming profanities and breaking windows on the passenger side of the vehicle.

That led to a call to the police, who responded with a canine squad. In the ensuing arrest Evans suffered extensive injuries to his leg.

“We want to provide some context because at this point you’ve only heard one side of the story,” said Palmer.

Police recommended charges against Evans but the crown decided to stay them.

In a Province story last week, Evans said he knew he did wrong – but thinks the resulting police-dog attack was way out of line.

Evans says he lost his temper when three buses drove right by him and he smashed the last one with a skateboard – but the vicious attack he suffered was complete overkill.

“For a moment of losing my temper, it’s a huge price to pay,” said the a 33-year-old construction worker. “I lost my apartment, I lost my job and my leg doesn’t work. What I did was wrong, but the repercussions are ridiculous.”

Evans said he required about 100 staples to close his wounds after the attack.

“When the bus took off, I decided to skateboard home,” said Evans. “I didn’t even know there were police around. A police dog should never be the first responder.”

Meanwhile, the Pivot Legal Society is asking the Vancouver Police Department to probe what it calls a “really high” number of instances of police dogs biting suspects.

According to statistics from the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner (OPCC), between March 2011 and January 2012, 46 per cent of the reportable injuries received from B.C. municipal forces came from police dog bites. The year before it was 48 per cent. A recent OPCC quarterly report states that “most reportable injuries are as a result of police dog bites.”

Dox, center, and Lyon, right, were killed in May during an operation carried out by Military Police.

BRAZIL — Quick, determined and with impeccable senses of smell and hearing, Dox and Lyon lost their lives during a recent police operation.

The two dogs were fatally shot while pursuing suspects in a forest near the city of Ribeirão das Neves on behalf of the Minas Gerais Military Police on May 17.

As soon as the trained German Shepherds located the hiding criminals, they started barking to alert officers they had located the suspects.

“One of the fugitives fired nine rounds and five hit Dox and four hit Lyon,” says Capt. Paulo Roberto Alves, commander of the Minas Gerais Military Police (PMMG) Shock Brigade, where the dogs had trained and served. “They gave their lives to protect police officers.”

But the PMMG took an extra step to honor their canine colleagues.

The courage shown by Dox and Lyon, who had been on the force for six and two years, respectively, inspired the organization to create a Hall of Heroes.

It’s expected to be built this year at the headquarters of the PMMG’s 1st Company for Special Missions, in Contagem.

The hall will contain the ashes of dogs lost in service, as well as plaques and their photographs.

Dox and Lyon will be the first enshrined.

The dogs also were the first to be cremated by the PMMG, on May 20. Prior to their cremation, the officers spent a few minutes with the Dox and Lyon’s remains, paying respect to their fallen heroes.

“It was one of the saddest moments of my life,” says Officer Luís Antônio de Castro Maciel, who was assigned to work with Dox five years ago. “It was like he was family to me.”

Officer Welly Lucindo, who was assigned to work with Lyon more than two years ago, says he “lost a friend.”

“What happened was a real tragedy,” he says. “I’m never going to forget him.”

Alves says the 16 dogs assigned to the unit are considered police officers.

“They train, they’re registered and they work just like any other officer,” he says. “In addition, they learn to give their lives if necessary.”

Police dogs are an invaluable resource when conducting operations, Alves says.

“In dense forests, 70% of the operation depends on the dogs, and only 30% on the human officers,” he adds. “They’re essential.”

“The dogs are one step ahead of the human officers in terms of speed, because of their body types; in hearing, because they can detect infrasound and ultrasound; and in their sense of smell, because they possess somewhere around 200 million olfactory cells, while a human, on average, has around 5,000,” says Sgt. Marcelo Piovesan, who heads the technical training of the War Dogs at the Army Police’s 5th Company in Curitiba in the state of Paraná.

The Federal Highway Police (PRF) in Paraná said the dogs’ performances played a major role in the department’s recent success in its fight against narcotics. The results of the PRF’s operations in Paraná enabled the state lead the nation in crack and marijuana seizures.

“Three police officers would take between 15 to 30 minutes to inspect the baggage on a passenger bus,” says Leonel Weng, a police officer who works with the PRF police dogs. “In two minutes, a dog can let you know if there are drugs on the scene.”

Brazilian Police pay their respects to Dox and Lyon.

Brazilian Police pay their respects to Dox and Lyon.

ROMULUS, Mich., (WXYZ) – A few dog treats, a game of fetch and the sound of friendly voices are what finally led to the safe recovery of a former bomb-sniffing dog that recently worked to secure the U.S. Capitol and the White House.

About 12 hours on the run, Officers from Romulus Police, the Airport and Romulus Animal Control were able to coax the five-year-old specially trained German Shepherd named Arco back into a collar and leash.

Late Monday night, Arco got away from his new owner, Sheri Schumann, on airport property after slipping out of his collar.

Arco had just flown from Arizona to Metro-Detroit to meet Schumann, but shortly after Schumann attached a leash to Arco’s collar to let him relieve himself after the long flight, he slipped out of that loose collar.

It’s believed the stress of the long flight from Arizona and other unfamiliar circumstances caused Arco to run.

We’re told Arco was set to be euthanized after killing a cat while working in Washington D.C. as a bomb-detection dog, but Arco was rescued by a group in Arizona and he was being flown to Schumann on Monday.

An officer with the Airport Authority and a Romulus Police officer both sustained dog bites during earlier attempts to capture Arco.

The Romulus officer had to have stitches.

After 10 days in quarantine, Romulus Animal Control officers say Arco will be released to Schumann who resides in Toledo.

The dog, 6, arrived on a flight from Arizona and got loose when it was let out to relieve itself, Romulus Police Lt. Josh Monte said.

It’s been on the run since shortly before midnight.

Police last spotted Arco — a retired bomb-sniffing dog that once worked at the White House —near Metro Airport around 5:30 a.m. and say they believe the animal is still in the area.

Officers advised the public not to approach the dog and to call 911 if they see it.

“It’s already bit two police officers, so we don’t want to take any chances,” Monte said.

One of those officers had to get stitches for a wound to his hand. The dog broke free from his collar when the officer went to grab it, Monte said.

As a precaution, officers this morning kept watch at schoolbus stops as children boarded.

The dog was transported to Metro to be united with a new owner, police said.

Trainer Liz Seely looks on as Tucker takes to the bow and sniffs the waves.

Killer whales in Puget Sound aren’t doing very well. They were placed on the endangered species list in 2005, and there are several hypotheses for why they’re not recovering.

In Puget Sound, a team of researchers is relying on a secret weapon with a killer nose to figure out what’s wrong with the orcas in Northwestern waters.

‘A Treasure Trove Of Information’

Scientists suspect lack of food, boat traffic and pollution are to blame, but no one knows for sure. Some think the answer might be found in the whales’ wake — specifically, their poop.

“It looks kind of like a combination of algae and snot. It varies in color, but it’s very mucusy,” says Sam Wasser, the director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington.

He likes to talk about poop, and he’s especially excited about killer whale poop. Scientists have developed techniques to analyze feces from all over the world. Wasser says it’s not gross; it’s scientific gold.

“We can measure the diet of the animal. We can get toxins from the feces, DNA so we can tell the individual’s identity, its species, its sex — and all of this is in feces,” he says. “So it’s literally a treasure trove of information.”

But finding wild animal poop, especially whale poop, isn’t easy, so Wasser has taken a creative approach to staffing his organization. He has Tucker, the team’s “scat-detection dog.”

Tucker is an 8-year-old black Lab mix. He’s what those in the dog world call “ball-obsessed.” He’ll do anything for a game of fetch — even if that means sniffing out floating whale scat from a mile away — because he knows that when he finds the scat, he gets to play with his ball.

With that information, Wasser’s been able to help prosecute ivory poachers in Africa, track wolverines in the Rockies, and better understand interactions between wolves and caribou in Canada.

Turns out, killer whales have the highest concentrations of toxic substances like pesticides and flame retardants of any creature on the planet. If scientists can understand more about the contaminants in these animals, they may be able to explain why they’re not recovering.

On The Hunt

The quest starts in San Juan Island’s Snug Harbor, where Wasser and his team conduct research on killer whales. White caps slap at the bow of their research boat as it heads out of the base into some pretty rough water. Tucker wanders back and forth across the bow, but doesn’t seem too excited.

“What he’ll do if he doesn’t have anything, is he’ll come back and settle down and sit right next to me,” says Liz Seely, Tucker’s trainer. She has him on a leash as the boat crisscrosses the waters where the whales last surfaced.

“When he gets excited, he’ll start standing up on the bow, wagging his tail, getting really animated. So for now, he’s just checking the scene.”

But as the team rounds a rocky outcropping, the radio pipes up with the identification numbers of a pod of killer whales spotted nearby. To the left, black dorsal fins emerge, several hundred yards away.

The team spends about 20 minutes bobbing along after the whales, but alas, Tucker comes up empty-snouted. The winds are too strong and the water’s too rough for him to lock onto a scent.

“No poop,” Seely confirms.

Despite this unlucky mission, the team will continue to collect samples from killer whales in these waters throughout the summer. In the past, they’ve been able to show that during periods of high vessel traffic — Fourth of July weekend, for example — the whales have higher levels of stress hormones in their feces. They can also tell when the whales are undernourished and connect that to lower fertility rates.

With orca populations in Puget Sound still disturbingly low, researchers believe the answers may lie in these floating globules of data. After all, a sample of whale poop is kind of like a snapshot of pollution levels in coastal waters.

And that’s a photograph worth looking at.

Retired Miami-Dade Narcotics Detector Dog, Franky.

MIAMI — Franky the drug dog’s supersensitive nose is at the heart of a question being put to the U.S. Supreme Court: Does a police dog’s sniff outside a house give officers the right to get a search warrant for illegal drugs, or is the sniff an unconstitutional search?

Florida’s highest state court has said Franky’s ability to detect marijuana growing inside a Miami-area house from outside a closed front door crossed the constitutional line. The state’s attorney general wants the Supreme Court to reverse that ruling.

The justices could decide this month whether to take the case, the latest dispute about whether the use of dogs to find drugs, explosives and other illegal or dangerous substances violates the Fourth Amendment protection against illegal search and seizure.

Many court watchers expect the justices will take up the case.

“The Florida Supreme Court adopted a very broad reading of the Fourth Amendment that is different from that applied by other courts. It’s an interpretation that a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court will question,” said Tom Goldstein, who publishes the widely read SCOTUSblog website and teaches at the Harvard and Stanford law schools.

The case, Florida v. Jardines, is being closely monitored by law enforcement agencies nationwide, which depend on dogs for a wide range of law enforcement duties.

“Dogs can be a police officer’s best friend because they detect everything from marijuana or meth labs to explosives,” said Kendall Coffey, a former U.S. attorney in Miami now in private practice.

The 8-year-old Franky retired in June after a seven-year career with the Miami-Dade Police Department. He’s responsible for the seizure of more than 2.5 tons of marijuana and $4.9 million in drug-contaminated money. And because he’s an amiable chocolate Labrador, he was used extensively in airports, sports arenas and other places where people congregate.

“He’s a friendly, happy dog,” said his former handler, Detective Douglas Bartelt, who kept Franky after he retired. “People don’t have fear because of his appearance.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has approved drug dog sniffs in several other major cases. Two of those involved dogs that detected drugs during routine traffic stops. In another, a dog found drugs in airport luggage. A fourth involved a drug-laden package in transit.

The Florida case is different because it involves a private residence. The high court has repeatedly emphasized that a home is entitled to greater privacy than cars on the road or a suitcase in an airport. In another major ruling, the justices decided in 2001 that police could not use thermal imaging technology to detect heat from marijuana grow operations from outside a home because the equipment could also detect lawful activity.

“We have said that the Fourth Amendment draws a firm line at the entrance to the house,” the court ruled in that case, known as Kyllo v. United States. The justices added that the thermal devices could detect such intimate details as “at what hour each night the lady of the house takes her daily sauna and bath.”

It’s well-settled that law enforcement officials can walk up to a home and knock on the front door, in hopes that someone will open up and talk. But if a person inside refuses, the officers must get a search warrant — and for that they need evidence of a crime.

On the morning of Dec. 5, 2006, Miami-Dade police detectives and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents set up surveillance outside a house south of the city after getting an anonymous tip that it might contain a marijuana grow operation. Bartelt arrived with Franky. The dog quickly detected the odor of pot at the base of the front door and sat down as he was trained to do.

That sniff was used to get a search warrant from a judge. The house was searched and its lone occupant, Joelis Jardines, was arrested trying to escape out the back door. Officers pulled 179 live marijuana plants from the house, with an estimated street value of more than $700,000.

Jardines, now 39, was charged with marijuana trafficking and grand theft for stealing electricity needed to run the highly sophisticated operation. He pleaded not guilty and his attorney challenged the search, claiming Franky’s sniff outside the front door was an unconstitutional law enforcement intrusion into the home.

The trial judge agreed and threw out the evidence seized in the search, but that was reversed by an intermediate appeals court. In April a divided Florida Supreme Court sided with the original judge.

In its petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, state lawyers argue that the Florida Supreme Court’s decision conflicts with numerous previous rulings that a dog sniff is not a search.

“A dog sniff of a house reveals only that the house contains drugs, not any other private information about the house or the persons in it,” wrote Carolyn Snurkowski, Florida associate deputy attorney general. “A person has no reasonable expectation of privacy in illegal drugs.”

The criminal case against Jardines is on hold until the question involving Franky’s nose is settled. Meanwhile, Jardines is out on bail following a 2010 arrest for alleged armed robbery and aggravated assault. He pleaded not guilty in that one, as well, and trial is set for Feb. 21.

“We sent him off to a vet,” where they will perform a necropsy on the dog, said Moore Police Officer Jeremy Lewis.

According to police, Bak, a 5-year-old German shepherd, was last seen Friday night in a kennel on the property of his handler, Sgt. Kerri Andrews. Someone removed the lock on the security pen and either took the dog or allowed him to escape, police said.

“Someone let him out, but we don’t know who,” Lewis said. “We are still investigating.”

A police officer found Bak’s remains the following day more than a mile away, near Interstate 35 in Moore. The location was within the Oklahoma City Metropolitan Area. According to Lewis, there was obvious trauma to Bak’s body.

For three years, Bak worked for the police department, tracking suspects, conducting building searches and sniffing out narcotics. He was one of two K-9s on the force and was considered a member of Andrews’ family, police said.

While police are still trying to determine what exactly happened to Bak, authorities do suspect foul play.

“[He] was inside a kennel, inside a backyard, inside a gated neighborhood, so someone basically had to let him out of three things,” Lewis said.

It is not uncommon for someone to target a police K-9, but Russ said it occurs less today than it has in years past.

“When we first started getting involved with dogs finding narcotics, there were several cases where dogs who found large stashes of narcotics had bounties put on them,” Russ said.

According to Lewis, police are not aware of anyone who wanted to harm Bak. If a suspect is identified, he or she will be charged. Causing the death of a police dog in Oklahoma is a felony offense.

Anyone with information on Bak’s disappearance and death is asked to contact Moore police at 405-793-5171.

MARYLAND – A man in a “Frosty the Snowman” costume was led away in handcuffs Saturday morning during the town’s annual Christmas parade, charged with assault and disorderly conduct.

Police identified the man as Kevin Michael Walsh, 52, of Chestertown.

Walsh was charged with assaulting two police officers and a police dog, according to Sgt. John A. Dolgos. Walsh also was charged with disorderly conduct.

After processing at the police station, Walsh was to be taken to the district court commissioner’s office for a bond hearing, according to Dolgos.

The charges against Walsh stem from an alleged confrontation at about 10:15 a.m. at Cross and High streets the nexus of the Christmas parade, which stepped off at 10 a.m.

Walsh is accused of kicking at police dog Henzo. The dog was sitting at the intersection with handler Pfc. James Walker as part of “traffic control” for the parade. Dolgos said that Walker “kindly escorted him away from the crowd and then it got heated.”

As Walsh was taking off the head portion of the “Frosty” costume, he allegedly hit Walker in the face with it, according to police.

Walker and Pfc. Marty Heinefield placed Walsh on the sidewalk in front of The Compleat Bookseller “as part of routine takedown,” Dolgos said in a telephone interview Saturday morning. The arrest was very public. Walsh could be heard screaming, over the din of the parade, “You have no right to arrest me.”

As Walker and Heinefield were trying to place Walsh in the patrol car, Walsh allegedly pushed Heinefield.

Walsh also was seen walking around the downtown area Friday night dressed as “Frosty,” participating in the celebration surrounding the official arrival of Santa Claus.

There were no reports of improper behavior, according to police. Walsh is currently on probation for a September conviction for disorderly conduct.

According to Elk Grove, California Police Officer Chris Trim, a SWAT team and hostage negotiators were called on scene (though thankfully, there weren’t any hostages).

Police then fired tear gas into the home but the suspect did not give himself up.

Finally, police sent a K-9 into the home to locate the suspect. The suspect actively fought the dog and was bitten by the dog, according to Trim.

“The suspect physically fought with the canine, attempting to choke the dog out. The canine continued to stay on the bite. Additional officers responded in and we were able to take the suspect into custody,” Trim said.

Paramedics were called to the scene to the treat the suspect’s injuries; the extent of his injuries were unknown.

The police dog, an 8-year-old Dutch Shepard named Rocko, was taken to Bradshaw Veterinary for an examination, Trim said.

The suspect is wanted in a Sacramento Police Department case for stabbing a man early Monday.