My name is Brad Smith. I've been a police officer since 1981. I've been a K-9 handler for the West Covina Police Department in southern California for 20 years and for the last 18 of those years I've been a SWAT dog handler and trainer.
Canine Tactical Operations & Consulting
I'm also the founder of Canine Tactical Operations & Consulting or K9TacOps for short. I provide consulting services to law enforcement on K-9 related issues such as: dog and handler selection, oral boards, training, report writing, policy, case law, use of force, deployment tactics for K-9 patrol deployments and K-9 SWAT operations.
I provide Expert Witness Testimony and consulting to attorneys in criminal and civil cases regarding K-9 and K-9 SWAT deployments.
I also provide basic & advanced CAnine Tactical Schools (CATS) for K-9 handlers and SWAT & K-9 Interaction During Deployment School (S.K.I.D.D.S.) for SWAT teams and K-9 units.
Please go to my web site at K9TacOps.com for further information.
S.K.I.D.D.S.
For my Master Instructor project I designed the only POST certified SWAT and K-9 course, which brings SWAT and K-9 teams together for organized training. The class is called S.K.I.D.D.S. which stands for Swat & K-9's Interacting During Deployment School.
For those that do not understand canines or have a misconception as to just how beneficial canines can be to a Swat team, S.K.I.D.D.S. is the answer. The goal of this three day course will be to educate and train both canine handlers and the Swat team members on the deployment of police service dogs in a Swat operation.
At S.K.I.D.D.S. we will teach you approaches, entries, slow stealth and tactical team movements and searching techniques, safer arrest techniques along with team movement during live gunfire. The skills you will learn at S.K.I.D.D.S. will enhance your searching abilities and make your job safer and easier.
After searching with SWAT I felt there should be very little difference in the way a patrol K-9 team searches for a suspect verses when SWAT and K-9’s search for a suspect. I discovered there were no K-9 classes that taught these search tactics. So I designed CATS, which stands for CAnine Tactical School.
CATS is for handlers and K-9's that need a little help before they train with their departments SWAT team. CATS is also for patrol K-9 teams that don't have a SWAT team, will never search with a SWAT team and need a class to improve their officer safety and searching techniques.
The same techniques that are taught at S.K.I.D.D.S. are taught at CATS.
Both S.K.I.D.D.S. and CATS are open to all sworn police officers and military police who are currently members of their departments K-9 unit or Swat team. Swat and K-9 supervisor are encouraged to attend.
