By Stephen Matthews, Ten One
It was meant to be a standard search warrant for a bail absconder, with Constable Josh Robertson and his dog Gazza on hand in case the subject fled.
Investigators are still piecing together what happened next – but within a minute of entering the house, one officer had been injured jumping from a window and Gazza was dying, having blocked a gunshot Josh thinks would otherwise have hit him.
Josh ran out of the house carrying Gazza and sought cover. “I laid him down and he just died there,” he says. “That was really hard, really tough.”
The gunman barricaded himself in a nearby house where police found him dead the following morning despite the efforts of a negotiation team to bring him out safely.
As the Porirua siege held the headlines over Anzac weekend, Josh and his partner were trying to come to terms with their own loss.
“You don’t go home and turn the dog off, then turn him on again to go to work. He comes home and he’s our mate. It’s our lifestyle. He’s not there and we miss him.”
Gazza was a focused, formidable police patrol dog who could “flip the switch” to become a playful, loving pooch at home or a charmer of small children on a school, kindy or Ronald McDonald House visit.
“He was pretty special,” says Josh. “He was our boy. At home he was just a silly dog, not a tool for catching criminals. At home he was a big goober.
“All he wanted to do was carry his rugby ball round and be with us. He wanted our company and it was unconditional.
“He would sit at the front door looking into the house – his favourite thing was to try to creep in. When we shooed him out again he would ‘accidentally’ drop his rugby ball so he’d have an excuse to come in and get it. It was almost like he had a sense of humour, like ‘I’m just joking with you’. He was a clever dog.
“Everyone who knew him really liked him. With offenders it was business, but in a comfortable setting he was just a lovely dog.”
They had been a team since Gazza was eight weeks old. Josh joined Police in 2007 in Lower Hutt and began fostering puppies as preparation for becoming a dog handler. “I love policing and I love dogs – the combination of the two was the ultimate.”
One of his puppies was Ox, later to become Police’s champion patrol dog. Gazza was the last of six. In 2013, when Gazza was around ten months old, the pair went into training.
“We started training on 1 April 2013, and graduated on 13 December. It takes a bit longer than that usually but he was a good dog, an easy dog to train.”
Their first catch as members of Wellington Dog Section was a man they tracked after he broke a window – a low-key start to what soon looked like a stellar career.
In their first year, Josh and Gazza made 86 catches. The average is around 50. There was a bit of luck involved, says Josh, and great support from colleagues. But mainly an exceptional dog.
“From a pup he was driven to do everything at 100mph - but if you channelled it you could get him to do anything you wanted him to do, he was so eager to please."
The pair were in the news in 2015 when a cornered offender tried to choke Gazza. “We tracked for about four kilometres through properties, parks, streets. It started to rain quite heavily, which makes tracking harder. The dog didn’t slow down the whole time. He knew exactly what he wanted, just doing his thing really.
“We saw a guy going through bush ahead of us at the end of the street. Gazza caught him, he tried to take the dog on, the dog won.
“It was really special that when the offender tried to take the dog on, and the dog’s knackered after a 4km track, he still gave it his all.”
Josh has been amazed by the support he has received from police and public alike. Police Minister Judith Collins has visited and pictures drawn by local children stand among the bouquets.
“The support has been overwhelming - messages from hundreds of people around the country who I’ve never met, within Police and outside Police. You realise how much what we do touches other people, especially with the dogs.
“The other handlers have gone above and beyond what I’d ever imagined. The Welfare people have been really good. It’s great to have Police looking after us like this.”
Josh, his colleagues and loved ones farewelled Gazza at a private ceremony a week after the shooting. He says he definitely intends continuing with a new dog, and it’s possible he may be able to help his old mate’s legacy live on.
“There’s nothing set in concrete yet but there will be options. With Gazza being a breeding dog it would be nice to carry on that legacy with a little Gaz pup, if that’s an option.
“He was such a strong character I believe that will come through in his puppies.”
Gazza was a few weeks short of his fourth birthday - “just coming into his prime” – and was set to be one of the stars of the yet-to-screen eighth series of TV One’s Dog Squad.
“I’m really looking forward to watching the Dog Squad footage,” says Josh. “Sitting down with a couple of beers and watching him work again. He was beautiful to watch.”
This is a story from the May issue of Ten One, the monthly magazine of New Zealand Police. The May community edition will be available next week on the Police website at www.police.govt.nz/news/ten-one-police-magazine.