Marco's Catches
stop it...search it...seize it...
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Stop it...Search it...Seize it...
PSD MARCO service 10/1992-6/2001
THE"ADDICTION"forCRIMINAL
INTERDICTIONANDPATROLLING
True Stories of Marco's Greatest
Apprehensions and Drug Arrests:
"The 'Double Catch' :  Same Day"
 Marco loved to find his toy.  His toy was anything he could chew on.  But the
reason I loved it that he craved his toy is because he would sniff for it
vehemently.  Marco had been trained to sniff out illegal drugs by using his
nose.  But how is what most people wonder.  Many people are under the false
pretense that police dogs are addicted to the drugs that they sniff out.  Not
even close is the answer to that.  First of all, it’s the chemicals in the drugs that
get people “high” or even addicted to them.  But the odors that these illegal
drugs give off are nothing that gets a human “high” or addicted to.  The dogs
are trained to get use to smelling the odors by these odors being absorbed into
their toys.
So every time Marco would chew on his toy, he smelled the odor of
methamphetamine, marijuana, cocaine or heroin.  Those were the main odors
Marco was trained for when he was a Detector Dog.  Many police dogs have
been trained for those odors and even more illegal drugs nowadays.  So the
idea was Marco would hunt when commanded, him believing when he
smelled his toy he was gonna find it and reward himself by finding it.  But what
he actually was doing was being trained to alert to those odors with him
thinking it was a toy.
Marco possessed one of the exceptional ‘drives’ needed for a good ‘detector
dog’ which was his ‘prey drive’.  That was his drive that after he had his ‘prey’
(his toy) he loved to chew on it and then use his ‘retrieve drive’ and fetch it
when I threw it.  So he was obsessive with his toy and he always loved to play
with it.  The more I played with Marco and his toy, the more he loved it.  The toy
would be anything from a shoe to a piece of rubber hose.  As long as I had the
toy ‘prepped’ with one of those odors, I knew he smelled it as he played and
chewed on it.
The easiest way to get it to smell like the odor was to simply put the toy in a
military ammo can with a small amount of drugs.  Then the odor would
saturate the toy.  Simple concept actually.  So in realistic fashion Marco
thought he was always hunting for his toy.  He was actually helping me find
illegal drugs.  So on an actual deployment around someone’s car, if Marco
alerted to the odor he would aggressively scratch and bite at that area.  It
wouldn’t matter if he smelled the odor at the bottom of a car door seam or at
the front bumper of a vehicle.  He smelled what he thought was a toy hidden.
Once that alert happened, it was ‘probable cause’ time.  That meant we as
law officers needed no search warrant as long as it was a vehicle that the
certified police dog had alerted to.  This was a decision made long ago by the
courts not we in law enforcement. We would then search that vehicle and
usually find the illegal drugs either easily hidden or secreted very well.  
One of these times that the illegal drugs were located by Marco actually
resulted in a double ‘Marco Catch’. The following explains this.
I had literally been married for only two days and was four days away from my
new bride and me to leave on our Honeymoon cruise when I was called at
home by dispatch that one of our troopers had a vehicle that he had lost on a
vehicle pursuit and the vehicle had been located.  Only thing was when the
trooper located it, it was empty of any suspect.  The vehicle ended in a
neighborhood in Grand Island.  The pursuit happened after the trooper had
made a traffic stop of the car for a minor traffic violation and after talking to
the subject the trooper became suspicious and the suspect sped off in his
vehicle.
 The call came to me around three in the afternoon.  When they told me
George was the trooper who had made the request for me for this little pursuit
and his suspicions he had on the car, I knew Marco and I were on a call that
would be eventful.
Trooper George Scott was a guy who had came on the Patrol a year earlier
than I and always had a knack for catching bad guys.  He was ‘head smart’
and always had the sense of being safe while working in such a dangerous job
and didn’t take unnecessary risks.  In fact George was a guy I tried to recruit to
join the Patrol’s SWAT (Special Weapons And Tactics team) that I was on.  He
later joined and was a valuable Team member. This traffic stop of his was no
different in the tenacity he possessed in catching criminals
He had stopped a white Dodge 4-door being driven by Oscar Bustamante-
Corrales.  Mr. Bustamante had made George suspicious enough that he had
asked for consent to search his car.  Mr. Bustamante had different ideas
though.  By mistake he decided to instead of simply saying “no you can’t
search my car” he fled back to the car, and sped off.  Not a smart way to
exercise your 4th amendment right. It would have been smarter to have said
“no’ than to have fled off breaking more laws.  So now a pursuit was on.  
George pursued the Dodge at speeds up to 90 MPH as the Dodge exited at
the first opportunity and sped towards the city limits.  As Bustamante neared
the city limits he must have made a bold decision to ‘ditch’ the car.  As the
Dodge entered a neighborhood, George lost sight of the Dodge as it eluded
him into a backyard area where the car was abandoned with the driver’s door
still open and the engine still running when George sped up to it.  George
quickly got a perimeter set up and being on the edge of the city limits he
thought he had a good chance of locating the hiding suspect with some
special dog assistance.  That assistance being Marco.
The call was made to me and after I arrived, there were at least five troopers
on scene, four deputies, countless city police officers and my own Troop
commander.  Yeah, I couldn’t quite believe my own Captain was walking
around with a shotgun poised as we started to search for the suspect. Captain
Bryan Tuma had just relocated to Grand Island with his fresh new promotion
after leaving our Training Academy.  Eventually he would be promoted to be
my Colonel.  
After I arrived I learned the officers had a pretty good perimeter of the area
which was a heavily wooded area right along a major highway.  I had hoped
the suspect had not hitched a ride with someone picking him up as a
hitchhiker before the perimeter was set up.
Before I started to search with Marco, a police sergeant came to me and
gave me the advice of not forgetting to search a grove of trees a little ways
apart from the main area of containment.  This separate area of trees was
actually a large ‘windrow’ of tall pine trees.  A ‘windrow’ is a line of trees that
are purposely planted to keep the abundant wind from being so strong near
buildings and homes.  They are also planted to especially help keep the heavy
snow from blowing towards the homes during the winter.  The trees make the
snow instead drift into tall hills around and into the trees and not towards the
homes or highways the ‘windrows’ are set up near.
I retrieved my 30 foot tracking leash and walked with Marco towards some of
the troopers.  These were the guys who would watch ahead of the dog for any
movement while I watched Marco.  They were George and Andy Allen.  Andy
had been a trooper as long as I had and came through the academy with
me.  Andy could always get himself into a good caper catching bad guys by
finding lots of dope in vehicles himself.  Andy was also on the SWAT team with
me and was trained to be tactical especially while searching in an
environment like this.
I hooked up the long leash to Marco’s collar and gave him command to
search the area.  It was late April, the spring time air filled my lungs as Marco
and I set off with George and Andy both ten feet back to my left and right.  
Marco knew even though it was the long leash that he was hooked up to, he
was not supposed to ‘track a suspect’ unless he recognized a ‘track’ on the
ground but instead was supposed to use his eyes, his ears and his nose to smell
for a human upwind of him.  The ‘ritual’ of tracking a suspect that he was
accustomed to didn’t occur so he knew we were gonna use his ‘air-scent
drive’ to hunt the air for odor.  We searched the area for some time when
Marco had indeed found a ‘track’ along the ground and pulled me along for
the ride.  We were practically running as Marco pulled.  I told George and
Andy Marco was on to a ‘track’ and keep up and keep their eyes open cause
Marco was ‘on it’.  We were now by this  long ‘windrow’ grove of tall pine trees
when Marco took a hard left underneath a large pine tree and I heard the
“Por favor, no mas... no mas…por favor”.  
The yelling came from the suspect Bustamante. Marco had apprehended the
suspect who had tried to hide himself in the overgrowth of the large tree.  As I
pulled hard on the leash it drug Marco towards me with the suspect in tow.  As
the suspect came out in sight he had his hands out and I immediately called
Marco to release which he did.  I then had Marco come back to my side to
‘heel’ but in his German command that I used with him, and then Andy went
in and handcuffed Bustamante.  We checked him over and the only injury he
had was to his lower calf where Marco had apprehended him.
After Andy searched him, he couldn’t find any identification on him or a
wallet. George said that Bustamante had a wallet and California driver’s
license when he had been stopped earlier on the traffic stop.  We radioed for
officers back at the Dodge to search it and when they radioed us back we
learned they couldn’t locate any wallet or license there either.  Just then
George emerged from the large tree where Bustamante had been hidden
and said he had found a wallet.  
Bustamante had hidden the wallet by burying it in the dirt.  Inside the old worn
leather wallet were two identifications.  One was the California license
originally that George had seen and also a Mexico license from the state of
Sinaloa with our suspects picture on it.  Only curious thing was that the name
on the Mexico license was a different name.  We later learned after getting our
suspect to the local lockup by checking his fingerprints he was not actually
Bustamante-Coralles but actually a guy named Antonio Coralles-Rodriguez
But Marco’s day was far from over.  We still had the Dodge to go over because
George had suspected it to contain drugs.  So we walked our way back to the
Dodge and had a tow truck hook up to it and then followed it back to the
patrol office.  We knew that the only way to get in the car at this point was a
positive K-9 alert or to seek out a search warrant.  We knew the K-9 alert would
be the probable cause we needed but it was up to Marco to get that for us.
After the Dodge arrived from the neighborhood pursuit to our office which was
only a few miles, we put the Dodge in the garage at our State Patrol office.  
George and I talked and Andy was there to.  In fact Captain Tuma was up on
the stairs that leads into the second floor offices when I walked in with Marco.  
These guys were waiting with anticipation but it was mainly George who was
really hoping his suspicions were right that he had obtained back on the
interstate with this guy and the Dodge.
Marco laid quietly at the rear of the Dodge on the cement floor about five feet
away when he started to sniff with his nose up and towards the Dodge.  He
leaned and leaned towards the rear bumper when he then got up on his own
and started to alert all over the back bumper.  Marco as all police dogs are
trained to be obedient and Marco had been given a command to ‘plotz’
behind the Dodge which is to lie down.  But the police dog is allowed to
‘break’ this obedient command for two reasons.  To either protect me if a
suspect starts to fight with me OR if he alerts to the odor of the illegal drugs he’
s trained to sniff out.  And that was why Marco had ‘broken’ the command of
his downed position.
So all I could do now was give him his continued commands to search for drugs
which he was doing quite well.  He stared to aggressively scratch all over the
rear bumper when I commanded him to follow me around the Dodge.  Marco
was not hooked up to a leash so he walked right beside me as we approached
the passenger side of the car and made it to the front all along with Marco
sniffing for any odor.  As we neared the front, Marco again started to alert all
over this bumper too.  He then started his scratching and biting all over the
bumper when I livened things up for him telling him in my high praiseful voice
that he was a good dog and rubbed his sides aggressively while hyping him up
all while he scratched and bit at the bumper.
That was one of the things this highly trained police dog lived for.  The love of
his Handler.  Me.  He needed to know he was doing a good thing.  He thinks it’s
his toy he smells but in reality, we later learned it was hidden compartments in
the bumpers filled with marijuana.  I soon had to reward Marco with an actual
toy and he ran all over the garage with it until he found a spot in the corner of
the garage lay down, and started to chew and bite on it.  We marched out of
the garage together as I put him away in the patrol unit with his still chewing
on that toy.
After and during the alert to the bumpers, Andy high-fived George and they
knew they were gonna be in for a busy night taking some bumpers off.  After I
walked back in the garage George already had a bunch of tools out and we
examined the rear bumper. After looking it over, it was seen that the plastic
bumper cover would have to be dismantled and removed which was the first
thing we did.  After the plastic bumper shroud was removed it was apparent
what we had.
The smuggling organization had actually removed the real inside bumper of
this car in the rear and replaced it with a long metal hollow box.  The metal
box was six inches by six inches and the entire length of the bumper in length.  
Probably four foot or so in length.  The metal box and been fastened to the
automobile very well and inside were the bundles of highly packed, bricked
marijuana that were formed exactly in six by six inch bundles and each were
around one foot long.  So after George pushed the bundles out from one end
to the other, it was apparent we had one more bumper to go.  We all moved
to the front bumper and after taking it away the same way, we recovered
those four bundles also and then took all eight bundles to the scale we had
there in the garage and Andy helped George weight up the ‘booty’.
After the night was all complete, George had seized nearly eighty pounds of
bricked marijuana and a car that had been changed to secrete this and
many other loads of illegal contraband.  George was also responsible for
catching a drug smuggler by the name of Antonio Coralles-Rodriguez, who we
learned had already been deported from the United States as an illegal alien
who already had a lengthy drug history before George’s arrest.  George
thanked Marco and me for the help and the fun evening and soon Marco and
I were off for home.
Millions of Vehicles will pass you by during your
career... Many of them with criminal activity...Will
you do something about it?