A bomb sniffing dog at a Chicago Metra station failed to detect a pound of explosives that was sitting less than six feet from it, and also failed to detect when the person carrying it walked past them multiple times. The dog and his handler also spent hours just standing around in one place instead of moving around within the train station as they were supposed to do.
A bomb-sniffing dog that protects the Chicago area’s commuter rails failed to detect a pound of explosives concealed in luggage less than six feet from its nose — and spent hours standing around, a CBS2/Chicago Sun-Times investigation found.
A dog and handler from Securitas Inc. did not react when an undercover tester walked past the team three times with the bag at Metra’s Ogilvie Transportation Center earlier this month. The tester then placed the luggage in front of the dog for 30 seconds, but the team did not discover the explosives. The experiment was captured on a hidden video camera.
The camera also showed dog handlers sitting and talking for as much as two hours at a time during five separate visits to Metra stations between October and January. The handlers and dogs rarely moved from one spot.
Metra spokeswoman Judy Pardonnet said the dogs were never intended to detect bombs on passing commuters. Still, Metra officials were troubled by the video showing the dogs and handlers standing around, she said.
Metra expected the teams to work their entire shift searching Metra’s downtown stations and train platforms for explosives when they were not checking out suspicious packages, Pardonnet said.
I hope the typical dog trained to detect explosives is a lot better than this one is or we’re all in a lot of trouble.
