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80-Pound Enforcer Makes Fifth Arrest

ANNE ARUNDEL, MD – Faced with a big, barking enforcer pushing toward him under a bed, a Shady Side man with open warrants surrendered to police.

That was the fifth apprehension by Grim, one of two “deputy dogs” of the Anne Arundel County sheriff’s office, said his handler, Deputy Jason Jett.

The team was leaving work after 9 p.m. June 30 when Jett heard on his police radio that officers were trying to arrest a man whose history included fleeing from police and violence against officers, and police could not get a response from inside the house, Jett said. He offered to swing by with Grim, his Belgian Malinois partner of a year. Among the 80-pound dog’s skills is tracking and apprehending people.

A shout of “Come out or we will release the dog” — Grim’s cue to start barking — inspired a relative of the wanted man to emerge from the house in the 1100 block of Oak Avenue and tell officers that Michael James Jackson II was hiding inside, Jett said. Ordered to search the home, Grim ran to a bedroom, where he barked at an empty bed, he said.

“I told him to come out or I would release the dog and he would be bitten,” Jett said. But no one came out.

“He will bite and hold; he will try to drag you out,” Jett said. “He’s not going to go in there as a sissy.”

Ordered to apprehend his target, the 3-year-old dog began to squeeze under the bed. “He was laying down flat, he got his head and shoulders under the bed,” Jett recalled. As Jett tried to lift the heavy wood-frame bed, the dog pushed up, as if to lift the bed to get to the man in hiding, he said.

From beneath the bed came screams of “I give up,” Jett said, as the man asked for the dog to be called off. “He got a face full of dog, probably,” Jett said. The man complied with orders to show his hands, allowing county police to arrest him, according to the sheriff’s office.

For five minutes of good work, Grim got no dog treats.

“If he does a good job, he gets his Kong,” Jett said, referring to a hard rubber toy. “He loves that Kong. He carries it around like it’s his pacifier.”

Jackson, 30, was jailed in lieu of $10,000 bail on a charge of second-degree assault and traffic charges. District Court judges had issued warrants for failure to appear in court for those cases.