Handling police dogs may appear as a straightforward career choice, but for Cambridgeshire Police Federation’s Becky Jones, there is a history of emotion behind her journey into the role – that even runs down to their names.
Starting as a Special Constable, Becky joined Cambridgeshire Constabulary in 1996 and soon after met her husband, Bryn, who was working on the Force’s dog unit. While exposure to police dogs in her work life was still a long way away, Becky became accustomed to their presence at home. Up until his retirement in 2014, a number of dogs handled by Bryn became part of the Jones family, with the couple’s children, Emily and Maddison, growing up alongside them.
Promotions early into her police service saw Becky, now a regular sergeant, have her options of departments and units narrowed. While still enjoying large spells of her career in reactive and neighbourhood teams, she had always held a desire to be a dog handler herself.
“Deep down, I always hoped to be a handler one day. Having such close contact with them, my heart has always been with the dogs, and it remained that way even after Bryn retired,” she said.
“I hoped that once he stopped, I’d be able to get the baton passed over to me.”
Becky set out to realise her dream in 2019 when she succeeded in a tough selection process to step into the role of a dog unit sergeant. This promised the opportunity to work with a variety of four-legged officers, particularly on the puppy walking scheme where youngsters are trained and bedded into the unit with a view to becoming full-time working dogs.
Although rewarding to oversee the success stories of puppies who would eventually be assigned to an officer, the scheme still only provided temporary connection and thus was not enough to fulfil her ultimate wish.
“At the time, the sergeant role was a supervisory one – it was only constables who could become handlers. I wanted to prove to the unit that I was keen and willing, but it was hard doing the groundwork with puppies and bonding with them when I knew they would go on permanently to someone else,” Becky, 48, added.
Functional yet fleeting, these short-term assignments continued when Becky briefly took on DeeDee, a Dutch Herder, before she too moved on to another officer – only whetting the sergeant’s appetite for a permanent working companion further.
Finally, in 2021, persistence paid off as she was granted a specialist search dog. Given the opportunity to select a puppy for a litter of spaniels, Becky said her choice was an easy one: “I was over the moon about the fact I was going to get this opportunity, so I really wasn’t fussy about what dog I would have. But a male pup in the litter stood out as soon as I saw him. I named him Walton, after my dad who died eight years earlier.”
As Walton settled into life as a police dog, excelling on search units at various drug warrants and operations, he also provided Becky with plenty of joy at home when moments of affection brought her closer to her late father.
After years of waiting to work alongside one police dog, along came another. A decision was made for general purpose dogs to be assigned to sergeants, and the mother-of-two was more than ready for a second police dog to come into her life a year later.
Having had enough time to prepare for the eventuality of being a handler, Becky already had another name lined up: Jerry – in tribute to the late Police Sergeant Jerry Thorogood, a constant source of support to the Special Constabulary in the early stages of Becky’s policing career, and coincidentally, the best friend of Bryn.
Set on the name as a nod to her dear colleague, who died in 2007 after a battle with cancer, her second time viewing a litter did not go entirely as planned.
She continued: “It’s hard when you visit multiple young dogs, knowing they are all as deserving of a good life as each other, so on my mum’s advice, I decided to let the dog choose me.
“The dog that chose me, however, was a girl. She kept plucking herself on my lap, and despite a few gentle attempts to push her back into the middle, I couldn’t keep it up.
“Still adamant I wanted to honour my friend, I called her Jerri, which I think has turned out just perfect for her.”
From the peripheries of the police dog world, Becky now found herself in the thick of it. Despite the familiarity, her perspective was still firmly on the outside, looking in – flipped in a few short years with the talented pair of PD Walton and PD Jerri.
While the former has continued to perform excellently in the detection of currency, drugs and firearms, the latter has taken well to life as an all-action officer, tracking down suspects of burglary and drug dealing.
Becky will retire from service in five years. This eagerly anticipated development has come late into her career, but she says she wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Walton and Jerri were made for me, and I was made for them. I don’t have any regrets about it all not happening at an earlier point. Hopefully, they’ll be with me when I retire and I can relax with them by my side,” she ended.
“It’s been a long road to this point but having two working dogs named after people I love, doing a job I love, is just the perfect scenario.”