David Jones – DogDetectives

Moving job is a big enough step, especially at 44; jumping from public to private sector a major switch in attitude; leaving Merseyside Police and going into business takes some doing. David Jones, born off Admiral Street, Liverpool 8, stood on the thin blue line in the Granby riots of 1981 and was cracked on the head with a scaffolding pole. The legacy of that injury, compounded by a later accident caused by an over-enthusiastic police dog, finally forced him to take early retirement from the force in 1995, ‘which was devastating, to be honest,’ he admits. ‘We wondered how we were going to survive, with two kids under 10,’ he says.
It was Jones’s wife Joyce who suggested they set up in business; DogDetectives was born in 1999. This wasn’t a whim. Jones had been head of the search dog unit with Merseyside Police with many years of research, training and experience behind him, along with an exemplary service record. DogDetectives are now leaders in the field, sending 90% of their successful trainees abroad, many to the Middle East.
His key motivation remains the same as it was when he joined the police at the age of 19. ‘I wanted to help others in the way that I’d have liked help when I needed it. I got a huge thrill from helping people,’ he says.
As a dog sergeant he had 30 constables under his command, and throughout the 1980s there was no shortage of work. ‘The provisional IRA kept us busy. We did all the defensive searches before VIP visits and responded to bomb alerts,’ he says.
So Jones is no stranger to risk and risk management. In that job there was no getting away from it: the keys to survival were sharp instincts, discipline, and constant communication. Jones is a believer in fate – ‘some things are meant to be’ – but also that if you don’t try, you’ll never know............