EDMONTON – A service dog is hailed as a good boy after helping to arrest a man during a break-in at Tim Hortons in north Edmonton.
Wednesday at 2:14 am PSD Bady and Cst. Damien Crockett was called to assist patrol officers with a break-in at a Tim Hortons at 153 Avenue and 99 Street.
The coffee shop was then closed with one employee inside, and police said the man broke in by kicking the glass door until it broke.
The man stole the employee’s cell phone and she ran into a back room on the landline to call the police.
Police say the man tripped the building’s breakers, cut all power to the building and terminated the employee’s emergency number.
When the police arrived at the Tim Hortons, they searched the building and found that the man had locked himself in a storage room.
“The suspect refused negotiations to surrender and come out peacefully,” said Sgt. Mike Garth, Canine Unit Supervisor. “He then took a fire extinguisher that was in the storage room and started discharging it to our members under the door.”
Sgt. Garth said that when officers entered the locked room, the man kept spraying them with the fire extinguisher, and the police dog (PSD) Bady helped contain him.
“The dog can usually fight through any kind of infection, and will use its nose to find it where we will need to use our eyes.”
The man has been charged with multiple burglary violations, as well as assault on a police officer and assault on a police dog, Sgt. Garth.
The Edmonton Police Department’s dog department praised PSD Bady Wednesday morning: “You can’t get between a cop and his coffee!”
“If there wasn’t a COVID, who knows which officers would have been with the Tim Hortons in the first place,” joked Sgt. Garth.
Sgt. Garth has been working at the dog unit for 10 years, working with an explosion detection dog. He and his colleagues usually respond to any “ongoing” phone calls where a suspect may be hiding or on the run.
“If they run on foot, then the dog will follow them. If they hide somewhere where they will be in a favorable position, where can we see us coming, but we can’t see them coming, and the efficiency of the dog,” uses his nose to look for him, ”said Sgt. Garth.
The unit has 16 handlers, two sergeants in charge of the unit, as well as a sergeant.
Six of the police dogs have been trained in drug detection with the aim of cross-training all dogs, and the unit also has two explosive detection dogs.
But the question everyone is thinking about? Did PSD Bady get a timbit as a reward?
‘You know what? Probably not, ”said Sgt. Garth. “The dogs are on a strict diet, but I’m not sure about his handler.”