K 9 Unit

Baltimore police have added five new members to their force in recent weeks - European police dogs capable of sniffing for drugs or explosives or taking down suspects with a fierce bite. A private foundation donated the money to purchase the dogs from a Belgian trainer, who delivered two of the dogs Saturday and three others nearly a month ago to the department's K-9 unit. The five - two Belgian shepherds and three Belgian Malinois - join 19 others owned by the Baltimore force. The dogs have brown or tan coats with black faces.

On a half-acre lot surrounded by a chain-link fence, Toby strained at the leash toward six wooden boxes, each about the size of a large industrial washing machine. In one of them, a man was hiding."Come on out," growled Officer Louis E. Gianotti, a 21-year police veteran. "I'm cutting the dog loose." The initial warning went unheeded. After a few sniffs here and a whimper there, a brownish-black blur of German shepherd ferociously lunged through a box door and dragged out a man dressed in blue.

During a random drug check at a high school parking lot recently, a Sykesville police dog alerted officers to a car. One small leaf in the trunk set off the dog's olfactory alarm.Police identified the leaf as marijuana and arrested a suspect.Hash, a 6-year-old Labrador, was simply upholding his reputation. During the last quarter of 1993, Hash assisted in nine drug arrests in town and participated in 39 vehicle scans. If drugs are around, he will sniff them out, said Officer Marvin V. Hewitt, Hash's partner and trainer for the past five years.

He might have been bored, lonely or just plain mischievous. Only Leo, a Baltimore County police dog, knows why he unlatched his kennel Monday night, pushed open a door at the county canine facility and trotted off into the streets. His escape prompted a five-hour search that included officers from a nearby precinct, officers from the special operations division and a helicopter, county police said yesterday. And had it not been for a woman who specializes in tracking down missing dogs, Leo might still be on the lam. Around 6:30 p.m. Monday, an alarm went off at the Baltimore County Police Department's K-9 Unit on Park Drive in the Baltimore Highlands area.

A program using police dogs in planned searches for drugs in vehicles parked at Carroll County schools has been canceled for the rest of the academic year, The Sun has learned.The program, in effect since 1995, has served mainly as a deterrent to keep schools drug free, county State's Attorney Jerry F. Barnes said yesterday."I am very disappointed that we had to cancel this valuable and effective tool to combat drugs and drug abuse in our county," Barnes said. "Resident troopers and the K-9 dogs are paid for by the county to serve the citizens of the county."

James D.M. Muldowney, a retired police officer who had been assigned to the Baltimore Police Department canine unit for nearly 30 years, died Tuesday of complications from Alzheimer's disease at Nichols Senior Care in Edgewood. The former longtime Overlea resident was 68. Mr. Muldowney was born and raised in Heckscherville, Pa., and served in the Navy from 1957 to 1961 as an underwater demolitions expert at the naval base in Little Creek, Va. After his discharge from the Navy, Mr.

A K-9 security team will be dispatched to patrol five Baltimore-area malls to beef up security at the properties, mall owner General Growth Properties announced Tuesday as the holiday shopping season gets under way. The team of two German shepherds will monitor activity at Harborplace & The Gallery, Towson Town Center, White Marsh Mall, The Mall in Columbia and Mondawmin Mall. While General Growth officials said no single crime or incident prompted the use of the K-9 unit, the new security plan comes after several high-profile crimes at Mondawmin this summer, including a robbery in which a gunman escaped with $100,000 worth of watches and jewelry from Elite Gold & Diamond.

The K-9 unit of Baltimore County Police was called to the scene of an accident in Parkton on Friday to look for the driver of a car who fled the scene. Maryland State Police were the first to respond to an accident on April 27 at 12:47 a.m. on northbound Interstate 83 at Exit 27, Mt. Carmel Road. State police said a 1999 Toyota struck the back of a tractor-trailer and the car caught on fire. The tractor-trailer driver was not injured, police said. Witnesses told police that the lone occupant of the Toyota fled from the scene and ran across the southbound lanes of I-83 and into nearby woods.

Seeking to bolster its response to 911 calls, the Baltimore Police Department on Wednesday announced that it is moving more than 40 officers out of specialized units and into patrol districts.  Changes had been hinted at since the arrival of Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts, who said he wanted to shift more resources to the patrol division, whose officers respond to most citizen complaints. "Commissioner Batts met with community groups, and visited [district] rolls calls where officers literally asked for more boots on the ground," said police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.

The Baltimore Police Department on Thursday added to the growing wave of video valentines to the Ravens on the eve of the AFC championship game against the new England Patriots. Among the cast of hundreds: a mounted unit, a K-9 unit, homicide cops, the bigwigs and a group that seemed pretty conversant with hand-to-hand combat. Based on the production values, it appears only single digits of your tax dollars were at work here. So enjoy! Let us count the ways: 0:19: Pro-Ravens freestyle posturing underscored by coordinated pink lipstick.