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His name is Bandit and his job is catching crooks. The irony, however, is lost on him. He’s a dog, after all, a 4-year-old German shepherd. Irony or not, last year Bandit was the Baton Rouge Police Department’s top patrol canine (that’s K-9 in copspeak).

In 2006, Bandit made 69 apprehensions, 39 of them for felonies. His bark is usually worse than his bite, though. On average, Bandit and the department’s other nine patrol dogs sink their teeth into less than a third of the scofflaws they catch.

“Not everybody gets bit,” says Cpl. Jason Sibley, Bandit’s partner and handler.

Not so for the cops in the K-9 unit. “We all get bit,” Sibley says. “It’s not a matter of if, it’s when.”

Sibley’s supervisor, Sgt. Bobby Glasser, who has 19 years in K-9, has scars all over him, some he says he can’t show. Everyone in the unit, dogs and handlers, train hard, real hard, Glasser says. The officers duke it out at full contact, with one playing the role of the bad guy so the dogs learn to help their handlers in a fight.

For the officers it’s black and blue time. For the dogs it’s just fun. “We have to do that so (the dogs) see what ‘real’ looks like.”

On the street, Bandit and his canine colleagues have been in some tough fights with hardcore criminals.

“Bandit has been punched, kicked; he’s even been bitten,” Sibley says.

In September, the American Kennel Club announced it was going to present the entire BRPD K-9 unit its Award for Canine Excellence, marking the first time an entire unit has won the prestigious ACE award.