Red faces at the Melbourne, AU police department
From the
BBC News comes this story of training for the wrong thing:
Powder mix-up fools sniffer dogs
A team of Australian drug sniffer dogs has been sent back for retraining, after it was found they could only track talcum powder, not cocaine.
Melbourne police found that the white powder used to hone the dogs' nostrils was not in fact an illegal substance.
A probe is now under way to see whether any illicit drugs have gone missing.
"They're very good at detecting talcum powder," joked Assistant Commissioner Paul Evans. "If there's any missing kids, we'll find them fairly quickly."
And the bag of powder used for training?
Police in Victoria have launched an inquiry to see whether any cocaine has gone missing.
But Assistant Commissioner Evans said that drugs were sometimes cut with other substances.
It was also possible that the training bag was mislabelled.
"It's embarrassing," Mr Evans told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Hat tip to
Mostly Cajun for finding this.
Posted by DaveH at May 28, 2005 10:15 PM