Hawk, a different kind of police dog, comforts victims instead of chasing baddies

If you believe there aren’t any police dogs you can safely cuddle without having your face ripped off, you’d be wrong.

Meet Hawk, a four-year-old black Labrador retriever who comforts the victims of crime rather than tackling the baddies.

A judge in Calgary ruled this week Hawk could accompany two young children, a seven-year-old girl and her nine-year-old brother, as they testified in a case alleging their father sexually abused his young daughter.

"You might be the first dog in Canada, Hawk, to be a court-ordered comfort dog," Justice Bruce Millar said in granting the application, CBC News reported.

Both Crown and defence lawyers supported the decision.

Hawk and his handler, Calgary police Sgt. Brent Hutt, work in the department’s victim’s assistance unit. They’re familiar figures in the halls of justice, helping tense witnesses get through pre-trial interviews with Crown prosecutors and to relax before testifying.

Accompanying a witness into court seems like a natural progression of that work, Hutt told Yahoo Canada News.

“What are you going to say about a dog helping out a child?” he said.

While Hawk might be the first canine comforter to make it into court, he’s not the first victim trauma dog in Canada.

That honour belongs to Caber, a yellow Lab, who joined the Delta Police Service victim’s assistance in the Vancouver suburb in 2010.

The initiative was the brainchild of Delta victim’s assistance worker Kim Gramlich, now Caber’s handler.

Attending a conference in the United States, she learned about Fozzie, an assistance dog working with the crisis-response unit in Scottsdale, Ariz. She came to believe dogs were uniquely capable of helping to bring crime victims to an “adaptive level of functioning” so they can aid police and begin dealing with their trauma.

“We can achieve that but the dog achieves it far faster and far more effectively, I think,” Gramlich said in an interview. “If we can get people to a better state much more quickly, then we can begin to help them move forward in next steps.

“Caber has the capacity to simply sit with somebody 100 per cent non-judgmentally, provide them unconditional support and affection and achieve a level of closeness and intimacy that I as a worker may never be able to achieve.”

Gramlich said she knows of 72 courthouse dogs working with U.S. prosecutors and child-advocacy centres. But unlike service dogs that comfort hospital patients or the aged, or even help calm frazzled travelers at airports, victim trauma dogs are relatively new to Canada.

Two years after Caber joined the Delta force, police in Camrose, Alta., recruited Lucy, another black lab. Another is working with police in Blackfalds, Alta, and two with the Zebra Child Protection Centre in Edmonton, a joint program between the Edmonton police and the Alberta government.

Hawk came to Calgary from Vancouver, where, like Caber, he was trained by the Pacific Assistance Dogs Society.

Hutt said his and Hawk’s work is an outgrowth of federal legislation that came into force in January 2006. The Protection of Children and Other Vulnerable Persons Act is intended to facilitate testimony by children and adults, such as those with physical or mental disabilities, for whom the experience might be daunting.

It includes having a victim’s assistance worker present if requested during the pre-trial process or in court as support during testimony. That may mean giving evidence from behind a screen to avoid making eye contact with the accused, or testifying from another room via close-circuit TV.

Having Hawk provide that support would be no different, said Hutt.

“If Hawk being in this room with these kids we’ve been dealing with helps them feel a little more relaxed so that they’re able to answer questions better, that adds to the credibility of their testimony,” he said.

“It adds to their confidence and ultimately adds to the fairness of the trial because we’re getting the best evidence we can possibly get from the witness.”

Hawk’s accomplishments in the last year have included helping on Calgary’s biggest homicide case, the April stabbing of five students at a house party, working with victims’ family members, witnesses, responding paramedics, police officers and even 911 operators.

He will also turn up at serious auto accidents, hospital trauma wards and the Sheldon Kennedy Advocacy Centre, which works with victims of child abuse.

“Children who walk through those doors most likely are having a pretty traumatic event that’s happened to them and now they have to talk about it,” said Hutt.

The approach is pretty standard. Hutt puts Hawk in a sit or down position, approaches the child and asks if they want to meet the dog. The answer is almost always yes.

“He’s a big face-kisser,” said Hutt. “Kids usually have lots of residue from hot dogs or other good things on their face. They’ll get a kiss, give him a good scratch and then they’ll just start playing. It’s that simple.”

After a while, though, Hutt moves things to the reason they’re there. With Hawk laying beside them, maybe his head in their lap, “we’ll have that other, difficult conversation.”

Gramlich said almost all the victims she works with want to met Caber, even those with dog allergies. And while young children seem to take to him naturally, he also has a surprising effect on older youth and adults.

She remembers a teenage girl, an important witness in a major crime, who’d built a defensive wall of adult maturity after many troubled years that included government care and drug and alcohol abuse. Once she began interacting with Caber the shell disappeared.

“As we were waiting to go into the courtroom, she was on the floor rolling around with Caber being silly and goofy,” she said. “It was almost like all the stress that was about to hit her walking into the courtroom was completely dissipated before she went in.”

In another case, Gramlich and Caber helped a little boy hospitalized after becoming inconsolable over the sudden death of his father. He struggled against any effort to calm him. When he saw Caber, the boy asked if he could come on the bed.

“Caber lay with the boy for three and a half hours,” said Gramlich. “His fur was wet from tears.”

Soon after, he was able to begin talking to helpers and start working through his emotions over his father’s death, she said.

Gramlich, who sits on PADS’ board of directors, said she’s aware of other police agencies who’re considering adding a dog to their victim’s assistance programs.

And Calgary is in the process of applying for a second dog after being approved for an additional officer for victim’s assistance, said Hutt.

“There’s so much more potential that obviously one dog and one police officer can’t meet when we talk about dealing with schools, stuff like that,” he said. “I wish I could do more.”