The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Julie, policemen’s best friend

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Monday, Mar 31, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Julie, policemen’s best friend

Staff Reporter

Mongrel has made patrolling the Marina easy

— PHOTO: S. THANTHONI

IN ACTION: Julie chasing away a child from the water front on the Marina Beach on Saturday.

CHENNAI: The Anna Square police are a relieved lot these days, thanks to a mongrel who has made their job of patrolling the Marina Beach easy.

Julie, the mongrel who has made the police station her home, is not a patrol dog. But she goes along with the policemen as they patrol the shoreline warning people against bathing in the sea.

“She has been with us for the past 40 days. One day, while we were patrolling, she joined us and chased away to safety children who were trying to get deeper into the water,” says inspector S.Sekar. The mongrel targets only those children who, she finds, are alone in the water. She goes in circles around the child or the youth until he/she moves away from the water line. She then carries on with her patrolling.

Police personnel say Julie has swum into the sea and brought back a few children and adults, too. “She barks when she sees someone deep inside the water. If the person cannot hear her, she goes into the sea and forces them back to the shore,” says a policeman.

Julie patrols the shoreline three times a day — at 11 a.m., 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. She refuses biscuits when on duty and is fed once in the afternoon by the police staff. At night she is chained. The police have vaccinated her. The stretch between Anna Square and Light House is a danger zone and a notice board with messages in English, Hindi and Tamil has been put up by the Triplicane Police District. Of the 1,613 people who drowned in the sea last year, 494 were from outside Chennai. The dead included 231 children. Mr. Sekar says ever since Julie joined them, nobody has drowned in the sea.

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