On the Road with Brandon and Drake

An Officer and His Dog Making Roads Safer

Arkansas Highway Police Corporal Brandon Bybee was an 18-year-old serving on a volunteer fire department when his crew pulled up on a violent accident one day. A large truck had crossed the center line and hit a pickup head-on. A husband and his wife in the pickup truck were headed toward the husband’s He has a vehicle full of technology, a beautiful dog, and a core belief that treating drivers with respect matters: “Everyone out here doesn’t deserve a ticket. I meet a lot of very professional truck drivers. We treat them with respect, and that generally means we are shown respect back.” final radiation treatment for cancer when they died on the road.

Bybee was friends with the deceased couple’s son, and the sight of the accident has stayed with him. As he thinks back, he says, “All these years later, that car crash is still a reminder that everyone using the roads should be able to feel safe. And that we all should be working to see that vehicles and roads are safe.”

Bybee joined the National Guard after high school. He completed military police training and then served a rotation in Afghanistan. When he came home, he spent a couple of years as an Arkansas Highway Police Officer, then two years as a warden with Arkansas Game and Fish. He eventually came back to the Arkansas Highway Police. “I enjoyed Game and Fish,” he says, “but I knew pretty quickly I missed being on the highways.”

Now Bybee lives in Marion with his wife, two children, and his beautifully trained K9 companion, Drake. Every day on this job is different. He looks for vehicles that might be unsafe, and he and Drake search for drug shipments passing through Arkansas from Mexico to Brooklyn. He also looks for indications of human trafficking victims in vehicles.

The young man who worked with a volunteer fire department at a very young age and served his country in Afghanistan understands that he is representing something much larger than himself when he puts on the badge and uniform and goes on the road. Bybee says, “I’m a firm believer in the United States Constitution. I am not going to do anything inappropriate to violate that belief when we pull a vehicle over. I won’t do anything wrong just to make an arrest.”

Drake

Drake is 18 months old. He is part German Shepard and part Belgian Malinois. He was born and bred in Hungary and started his time with the Highway Police at a dog training facility in Jonesboro. These dogs were originally bred to herd livestock, but now they are widely used in police, military, protection, and search and rescue roles. Drake lives in a kennel ARDOT built in the backyard of the family home in Marion.

Getting ready to spend the day with Drake.

To say he is attached to the family is something of an understatement. Bybee says, “During the winter storms this year, my wife made sure Drake was inside with us. He loved that. He likes our two family dogs more than they generally like him. But he knows what his job is. When he shifts from playful mode to approaching a vehicle on a search, it’s like a switch has flipped.”

When Bybee pulls out the long leash to take Drake out of the SUV to start a truck search, the dog’s ears are up. He is on point protecting his officer and is acutely aware of his surroundings. If he gets a scent of drugs, he will either freeze or drop down low, staring at where the drugs might be. There are five Arkansas Highway Police dogs like this living with their handlers across the state. They don’t just do drug searches. They are called in to assist local police with certain types of searches.

When Drake arrived in Getting ready to spend the day with Drake. Jonesboro, he and Bybee spent ten days training and bonding together. Bybee’s voice and body language, and the rubber ball hidden under his vest, let the dog know when it’s ok to be playful. But Drake never stops moving his head to see who or what might be approaching Bybee. This is clearly a working dog trained to deal with hard situations. Bybee says one of the most critical trainings they went through together was to be sure that after the dog has been turned loose, it will return to Bybee after the suspect is in custody. A dog that ignores its handler’s call to move back from the suspect will not last out here.

Bybee has a button on his belt that will open the SUV’s back doors and let the dog out if there is a confrontation. The police vehicle has a loudspeaker system to tell a suspect to stand down as the dog is about to be released. This system is based on a man and his dog, but it’s clear that a lot of thought has gone into the technology in the police vehicles. All traffic stop reports from anywhere in the state are in the vehicle’s laptop. The radio system ties into regional and statewide control centers. Video cameras are everywhere.

At one point, Bybee pauses to make sure his computer system is fully booted up. He says, “I don’t want to pull a truck over and waste the driver’s time while I deal with a slow computer. The driver has a job to do, and we respect that.”

Traffic Stop Protocols

Throughout multiple traffic stops on Interstate 30 in Saline County, it seems the truck drivers and police understand each other. The weight of the trucks is checked. If a large hauling job that exceeds a weight limit of 80,000 is underway, the driver will have special paperwork for that job. Many of the drivers hand the officers an iPad with their paperwork; others hand over multiple pages of shipping documents.

During some stops, Drake is brought out to do a “free air sniff”. The police are allowed to walk the dog around a vehicle to see if the dog senses anything unusual. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that this technique can be used at the officer’s discretion without probable cause. When serious quantities of drugs are found, they have generally been hidden in carefully constructed compartments within a vehicle. Without a trained drug dog like Drake, the process would take longer and be far more complicated.

A Highway Officer can’t randomly decide to search a vehicle without some reasonable suspicion that something is wrong. That process generally begins with a conversation with the driver. Seasoned officers are quick to spot behaviors or words people use during the stress of a traffic stop. Body language gives away a lot to a veteran law enforcement officer. These are generally indicators that the discussion should escalate. Paperwork is inspected. Questions are asked about people in the vehicle who might be involved in a human trafficking situation.

Trained K9s can find drugs deeply hidden in trucks and other vehicles.

Bybee says there is no typical description of a vehicle or a person likely to be transporting drugs. As he puts it, “I have arrested people over the years who look just like nice people you see in church. I have talked to truck drivers traveling with their pet monkey or parrot. Last night I did a traffic stop with a truck driver whose Persian cat was resting on the dashboard.”

Bybee also has moments where it doesn’t take Drake to find something is wrong. He remembers a traffic stop in West Memphis: “The driver began by saying he was traveling with an overweight truck, and he did not have a log book with him that records everything a truck driver does. So, I asked him if he had any drugs, and he said yes.”

When Jeff Holmes joined the Highway Police 33 years ago, roughly 270 officers were patrolling the state’s highways. A seven-year hiring freeze in the 70s sent the department into a period where it was understaffed for years. At one point, the department was down to 115 officers on patrol. Now that the number is back to 160, Holmes thinks a lot about future staffing and budget issues. He says, “The last time we posted for 20 job openings, we got 460 applications. We cut the 460 applicants to 60 people, who we ran through our extensive background check process. We then hired about 20 from the pool of 460 applications.”

Officers who work for Holmes think he understands the issues they face on the road each day. There is a sense of loyalty here. Bybee says quietly, “He’s a leader, but more than that, he always seems to care about his officers. He’s not a chief who starts looking at any situation from the perspective that the officer must have done something wrong.”

Highway police officers patrol the highway wearing a 9 mm pistol and a bulletproof vest. There is also a loaded shotgun in the back of each vehicle. And of course, Drake is sitting patiently in the backseat, ready to protect his officer if something goes wrong. This work is more intense than it once was. In recent years, the Highway Police have pulled hundreds of trucks off the road because the drivers can’t speak or read English.

The truck drivers are then sometimes turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers for processing. While some issues involving ICE have been loudly debated and attracted intense news coverage recently, the Arkansas Highway Police have a quiet and effective relationship with the federal agency.

The training, technology, equipment, and laws the trucking industry uses to protect all drivers are complex and strategic. But some issues are simple. If a driver can’t read a sign that says slow down, or merge, or one way, there is no doubt that the driver should not be on the road. That’s a pretty simple policy discussion.

This is not just about protecting drivers in cars; it’s about protecting truck drivers and common carriers who play by the rules. When you see a large company logo on the side of a truck, you are generally looking at a vehicle owned by a company that has compliance lawyers and safety executives acutely aware that federal and state laws need to be followed. Or, as Arkansas Trucking Association President Shannon Newton puts it, “They know what’s at stake and why safety matters.”

But as a recent 60 Minutes story pointed out, there are hundreds of truck companies today intentionally breaking laws, and then easily changing the name of the trucking company to continue to function unnoticed outside the law.

Against this backdrop, the work of the Arkansas Highway Police matters more than ever before. The use of highly trained drug search dogs is increasing in many states.

Police forces nationwide in recent years have been shifting from using German Shepherds to increasing the use of the Belgian Malinois. These dogs have an intelligence, an eagerness to train, an agility, and pure strength that make them ideal partners on a lonely stretch of highway.

But Drake is also beautiful with soft eyes that never really stray from Corporal Bybee. If you are a dog lover or owner, this is a fascinating relationship to watch. When the work is done, Drake goes into overdrive with happiness when Brandon Bybee pulls out a well-worn dog toy to give Drake some playtime.

If a highway police officer stops an unlicensed truck driver hauling product from a Mexican drug cartel through Arkansas, they will be confronted by officers and dogs like these. This is not work without dangerous moments. But it is certainly work that matters more than ever in a state located at the very heart of the American highway system.

If you want to see a video of Joe Quinn spending time on the road with Corporal Bybee and Drake, watch below.