I'll start. The officers that we select to be canine handlers certainly are a unique breed. They're dedicated beyond most. What I mean by that is it's a 24-7 job. When they go home, they're still looking after that dog. Will they deploy any differently? I don't think so. Will they take comfort in the fact that somebody is there to stand up for them if something unfortunate happens? Absolutely.
I'll talk from an Edmonton perspective. We've definitely seen an incline in crime, especially violent crime involving weapons. Is the likelihood greater now? I think it is absolutely. We don't know exactly what we're tracking usually. We may have an incident of a stolen vehicle crashing after a pursuit. The first members are there, and we're out tracking one or two subjects in the dark at two in the morning, jumping fences. Again, these are highly motivated individuals, but it's really tactically difficult for us because we don't know where they are, what their intent is, and what they were doing.
On many occasions as the investigators are on scene, they're finding handguns in the vehicle. They may find balaclavas in the vehicle. Now you start putting it together. Now it's more of a high-risk situation. Our officers are trained to always think tactically, but they just don't know because they and their team and their dog are in the dark tracking into areas that are unknown to them. I gave an example of one occasion, on which somebody was waiting for me, and I think every handler who has ever deployed will give you numerous examples of that. These are generally the 2% of people who do the crime. They're involved in violent incidents and have been involved in things probably since they were a kid. A lot of them are habitual offenders.