Inspector-General of Police, James Oppong Boanuh has announced that the police service has set up a K9 dog unit to assist officers in their operations.

The sniffer dogs are to help detect bombs, drugs and to a large extent, human beings trapped under a collapsed building.

According to the IGP, the sniffer dogs mostly seen at post during an emergency are not to control the crowd but to aid them in their work.

He was quick to add that the K9 unit is still under construction, hence, the reason it hasn’t been inaugurated yet.

Addressing the media at a press conference in Accra, Wednesday, Mr Boanuh said: “The dogs are not for crowd control. If we use animals for crowd control, they are horses…the dogs are sniffer dogs. They sniff out bombs, they sniff out drugs and they sniff out sometimes when there is an emergency and we are looking for people. For instance, when there is a collapsed building, the dogs can tell us the location of the person.”

“The police K9 unit has been set up purposely for the reasons that I have enumerated. It is not completely resourced that’s why we have not actually inaugurated it,” he furthered.

The IGP said the sniffer dogs are very useful in criminal cases too as they help in investigations to get culprits arrested.

"Following the trail of criminals, if something has happened and we are able to get some evidence…we can let the dog sniff it and then we follow a trail to try to help us to arrest the culprit," Mr Boanuh said.