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When Cpl. Nick Cicale went to meet his new police partner for the first time, he brought a gift he was sure would make a good first impression: hot dogs.

It was 2004, and Cicale, now a 13-year veteran of the Prince George's County Police Department, had been accepted to the department's K-9 section and was anxiously awaiting the arrival of his first dog. When a van pulled up in front of the police training center in Upper Marlboro, the driver unloaded a 17-month-old German shepherd, fresh off a plane from the Czech Republic.

"He handed me a 30-foot leash and said, ‘He's your dog,' and it was me standing there with a pocket full of hot dogs and hoping he would like me," said Cicale, of the dog, which he named Boscoe.

Despite Boscoe's standoffish demeanor, the pair bonded almost immediately. In the seven years since, Cicale, 34, and Boscoe, now 9, have become one of the department's most successful K-9 teams.

As of April 6, the two have recovered $586,016 worth of drugs this year — including more than 12 pounds of marijuana, 316 grams of crack cocaine and two gallons of PCP — of the approximately $593,000 recovered by the entire division, as of the end of March.

Cicale and Boscoe's drug recoveries in the first three months of 2011 total more than three times the worth the entire division recovered in all of 2010, approximately $191,000. Of that, $54,970 worth of drugs was recovered by Cicale and Boscoe in 2010.

"When we're hot, we're hot, and sometimes it's just luck," said Cicale of the large recoveries this year. "When you're on a roll, it's nice just to ride it out."

In January, Cicale was honored with a Merit Award by the police department for an incident in September when he and Boscoe recovered a gun police said was used in an armed robbery and carjacking for the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C. The crime had occurred in Suitland, and Cicale responded to the District when officers there spotted the car and arrested the suspects. After watching MPD's K-9 teams search for the weapon but come up empty-handed, he asked if he and Boscoe could give it a try.

The team ended up finding the gun and a glove the suspect allegedly had worn within about 100 yards of where the suspect was arrested.

Of the 20 dogs in the county police department's K-9 unit — including another dog owned by Cicale, a bomb-detecting German shepherd and Belgian Malinois mix named Zoey — Boscoe is one of five dogs trained to sniff out drugs.

The narcotics division has its own drug dogs for investigations, but the K-9 unit's dogs assist patrol officers in day-to-day work, such as when officers make a traffic stop and decide to search a car. Dogs in the unit also are trained to search buildings for people, track suspects and find evidence such as a discarded gun.

Sgt. Patrick Hampson, a member of the Robbery Suppression Team in police District 3 in Palmer Park, said patrol officers across the county know Cicale and Boscoe by name and often plan warrant searches around their work schedule to make sure the team is available.

Hampson recalled how Boscoe tracked down Ronnie White, the man who was charged with murder in the 2008 death of county police officer Richard Findley. White was arrested at a Laurel apartment complex and found dead in his jail cell the following day, so the case never went to court.

"It was a hot day, and it was a long track through a busy apartment complex," said Hampson, recalling the difficult conditions for tracking White. "That was the only way we were going to solve that case that day ... through Nick's dog."

A dog's ability to track a suspect and find discarded evidence can make or break a case, officers said.

"The dog is priceless," said Sgt. Jakob Wolford, a member of the Special Assignment Team in police District 4 in Oxon Hill. "Purses, wallets, phones and guns all get thrown in the woods. The best you can do is just kind of wander around in the woods [looking for them], but that's just not effective."

Regardless of the time of day or even whether he's on duty, Cicale remains upbeat and willing to help out, fellow officers said.

"Nick's out there a lot; he works overtime. He always got his dog with him, and he'll always respond," Wolford said. "Even if he's off and if I call him, sometimes he'll come in ... [or] find a dog that can come in from another jurisdiction."

Cicale's supervisor, Lt. Robert Frankenfield, said Cicale's skill comes from the passion he has for the job.

"All the handlers are great, but the more time you spend with your dog, the better you are. He loves what he does, so he spends more time with the dog, so the dog gets better and he gets better too," Frankenfield said.

Cicale admits he has avoided the department's promotional exams so that he won't get bumped up in rank and off the streets.

"It's the reward at the end, whether it's finding a bad guy hiding in a ceiling or a gun in the woods or a kilo of coke in the trunk ... and hearing the guys come up to you and say, ‘We wouldn't have been able to catch the guy otherwise,'" Cicale said.

anoble@gazette.net

\How dogs are selected and trained for the Prince George's County Police Department's K-9 section:

-German shepherds and Belgian Malinois are typically used as criminal apprehension or patrol dogs, and are used to track or find suspects.

-Labrador retrievers, German shepherds, Belgian Malinois and bloodhounds are used as detection dogs that search for explosives, dead bodies or drugs.

-Trainers seek dogs that are sociable and can search independently.

-The police department typically pays between $6,500 and $8,000 to purchase a new dog.

-Dogs and handlers go through 16 weeks of patrol school, during which the pair bond and the dogs learn obedience and aggression control, how to conduct building and area searches, and how to track people.

-After patrol school, dogs go through another 10 weeks of training to be able to search for drugs.

-Drug dogs are trained to identify six different types of drugs, and bomb dogs are trained to detect 23 substances commonly used to make explosives.

-Dogs used to be taught to scratch when they tracked an odor, but after concern over the dogs damaging property, they are now taught to sit when they locate the source of an odor.

-The K-9 division consists of 20 dogs and 14 handlers who attend weekly training sessions.

-Dogs typically retire from the department around age 10, but if they are still able to perform well in the field they continue for longer.