WCU human remains detection expert debunks Helene misinformation
Lisa Briggs (front left) with her K-9 Onna. Donated photo
Lisa Briggs, director of Western Carolina University’s Human Remains Detection K-9 training program and Emergency Disaster Management program, and Edwin Grant, HRD K-9 program instructor and long-time law enforcement officer, have been deployed with their HRD K-9s since the start of the recovery process for missing persons in Western North Carolina following the devastation left by Hurricane Helene.
During their deployment, Briggs and Grant have been made aware of and want to dispel some of the misinformation that has been circulated as a result of social media posts made by unethical or improperly trained HRD K-9 handlers.
Some of these issues include people self-deploying without being properly trained and without an official agency request, and some are deploying with official agencies using inexperienced K-9s and handlers.
Most alarmingly, fraud is occurring with GoFundMe pages related to K-9 handlers.
“Examples of this fraud can be found on social media,” Briggs said. “Unethical behavior from handlers, such as trying to raise money and diverting needed resources for personal gain during a disaster, is completely unacceptable.”
Following publication of this story, a GoFundMe spokesperson reached out to The Smoky Mountain News and provided a statement.
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“At GoFundMe, being a safe and trusted place to give and receive help is our top priority," the statement reads. "Our dedicated crisis response team is working around the clock reviewing fundraisers related to Hurricane Helene to prevent misuse. We have zero tolerance for the misuse of our platform and have put systems in place allowing anyone to report a fundraiser at any time if they have concerns, and our team will promptly review it. Donors are also protected through GoFundMe’s Giving Guarantee, which offers a full donation refund in the rare case something isn’t right.”
Self-promotion by these handlers on social media is also widespread, as is misinformation about untrue recoveries.
If a handler is marking an area where their dog gave a trained final response to the odor of human remains and leaves that area before the body is confirmed, calling that a find of human remains spreads misinformation and diverts limited resources.
This misinformation also gives false hope to the families of the victims.
“Agency resources are being diverted to double check what is in fact a false alert by some of these handlers,” Briggs said. “These examples are many, but a quick example includes one individual making false claims about human victim recoveries that were not verified before the handler left.
“These findings turned out to be remains from a cow and a horse. This misinformation escalated to where people, who were missing loved ones, had to wait for days for the debris piles to be searched because of the self-promotion and false information about human remains being discovered there.”
Briggs and Grant are being pulled away from urgent recovery operations to cross-check improperly trained handlers and K-9s and self-proclaimed handlers who could sadly be here for hero glorification.
Some of the numbers of recoveries being posted are simply not true. They may also be reporting the number of trained final responses that their K-9 gave as actual recoveries and not the actual number of human bodies their K-9 was responsible for locating.
There is a huge difference.
“We have instances where handlers are reporting victim recoveries by their K-9s only to be confirmed that the K9s are alerting on non-human remains, even dog remains,” Grant said. “This is causing an insurmountable degree of unnecessary work. In one case, a handler called in that his canine had located five victims in one location. What was verified is that the ‘human finger’ that his dog provided a final response to the odor of human remains was in fact a fishing lure.”
The K-9s are also incorrectly alerting to animal bones or other debris.
“The other ‘victims’ were old deer bones or pieces of wood,” Briggs said. “In regard to false indications, some law enforcement K-9 handlers and search and rescue handlers are wrongly rewarding their K-9s on animal carcasses and bones, incorrectly assuming they are human remains.”
Briggs shares that this creates a huge problem not only with the reliability of the K-9s during this disaster but also with the trustworthiness of these handlers and their K-9s moving forward.
“This is a handler error that is hard to recover from once the K-9 has been imprinted and rewarded on a non-human remains odor,” she said. “Of course, the K-9s will then give final responses to odors that are not human remains. It is also discerning to see HRD K-9s working on a lead.
“We all must be accountable for our actions, which includes our K-9s. Anything that we do to further harm an already devastated community is unacceptable, and those handlers need to leave and stop making posts on social media. Appreciation is given to those handlers who are examples of the ethical and proper way to contribute during this time of devastation.”
