#142 Narcotics Interdiction with Jeremy Bedingfield
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How did Jeremy Bedingfield become a narcotics interdiction officer and get his German Shorthaired Pointer?
Hello, everybody. Welcome to this episode of Canines Talking Sense. This episode, I wanted to get into the narcotics world a little bit. It's been a while since I've covered this topic, and I recently came back from a seminar that I did, and I met the guest I have on who's got quite uh to me an awesome career that I thought would be great to share with everybody else. This handler has been working. working in an agency in Southern California, specifically in narcotics and interdiction. And has his own little business. Jeremy Bettingfield, thank you for taking your time to come onto the show and tell us more a little bit more about you and kind of how you got into the position that you have now as a narcotics and addiction officer.
And we'll kind of go from there. Yeah, I appreciate you having me on. You want you want me to start with how I got into it? Tell us how a little bit like how you know a little bit your career path, obviously you've been a deputy and then how you got into the canine position and then specifically into interdiction.
Yeah, so I I am a deputy. I worked through, you know, jails, courts, patrol, all that all that type of stuff, and eventually made my way onto a proactive law enforcement team that was centered around Basically high-level drug trafficking cases. And for several years, I worked in a plain clothes capacity doing investigations. And part of that, we would do interdiction usually once a week because we had this federal grant that would pay us to go out there and hit the highways. And in doing that, I started to realize that I really liked interdiction even more than the plain clothes stuff, even more than The investigations. And I found that the investigative side helped me be better on the highway, essentially like picking out the better cars.
And we have a canine assigned to our team. That person was coming up on retirement. And when he retired, that's how I got a dog. So I didn't go through the, you know, the formal. Interview process. I didn't do what most people do to become a canine. I basically was shoulder tapped while I was on the team, said, hey, this is something that I'm interested in. I would like to handle the dog and do more of the uniform capacity type work. And that started in 2020. I got assigned a German shorthair pointer, and he's been with me ever since.
That's How did that go about? Did you guys like you said since you kinda went a non conventional way, how did you end up with the dog that you got? Was it by design to go with a floppy ear dog? Uh tell us a little about how you ended up with the the dog that you have.
Yeah. So the previous handler had a dual purpose uh patrol and narc dog. And he had them for I think it was like nine years and he didn't have a single uh patrol deployment or a bite deployment. So uh they came to the conclusion that that wasn't really necessary with the job that we're we're doing, you know, not to say that people aren't You know, not not to say that we don't get into pursuits and crazy stuff every now and then, but generally speaking, a drug smuggler is a little bit more on the business side. They're a little bit more uh going with the program type people, and a single-purpose dog just does just fine. So I wasn't involved with the selection process at all. We we have a pretty large canine program within our department, and that's all handled by
By the training coordinators and the sergeant. They'll travel out to wherever a vendor is. They'll do their their testing. And again, I'm I don't even know what they test for, to be quite honest. I I'm, you know, I'm a new handler. I I I've I've only been a handler for six years. So I'm not like very experienced in that side of things. But they go out, they select the dogs, they bring them back. and put us through academy and and our academy is in house. So the the trainers that we have put us through the academy.
And how long was your guys' academy as a as a drug dog handler?
It's four months. Yeah. So I I w I was in it from about January I I I think I finished two weeks early.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
How did Jeremy Bedingfield become a narcotics interdiction officer and get his German Shorthaired Pointer?
0:17–11:59
2
What interview techniques does Jeremy use to build reasonable suspicion during traffic stops?
11:59–22:07
3
How does Jeremy systematically search a vehicle for hidden compartments and drug traps?
22:07–33:14
4
Why does Jeremy prefer a two‑direction search pattern and walking the dog around the bushes first?
33:14–44:08
5
What tools and equipment does a highway interdiction handler need to locate and open hidden compartments?
44:08–54:41
6
How does language (Spanish) and cultural awareness affect interdiction stops near the border?
54:41–1:05:36
7
What challenges does fentanyl present for detection dogs and how does Jeremy train his dog to handle it?
1:05:36–1:15:53
8
What documentation and legal strategies does Jeremy use to defend K9 alerts in court?
1:15:53–1:25:39