Amanda Johnson is an Acting Detective with the Edmonton Police Service. We met in August 2021 when Shari Forbes and I traveled to Edmonton to set-up a some sites for the “pig trials”.
Amanda was a member of the Missing Persons Unit when we first met, but has recently been promoted to the Homicide Unit. She is also a Search Manager in these contexts.
In this podcast, you’ll hear about:
- Amanda’s experience as a law enforcement member, through the RCMP and now EPS
- Her experience and training as a Search Manager in law enforcement
- How scattered and scavenged remains can impact a search for a missing person, and different strategies that can be used.
Check out my blog for a series of posts (“The Smell of Dead Pig in the Morning“) that features pictures and details about searching for the remains of the pig carcasses Amanda and I helped set-up.
Support the podcast and my research and Buy Me A Coffee. Your contributions will go toward webhosting, transcriptions, and paying for my research travel expenses. (Gas ain’t cheap!) Want to find out more about my research? Check out the Scavenging Study.
Yvonne Kjorlien 
Thanks very much for listening and for commenting, Mary-Ann. Great to hear that after 27 years you’re still being surprised by the abilities of search dogs. They have their limitations but are pretty amazing!
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Interesting to hear about the Human Remains dogs. I work a HRD dog and have worked with Det Amanda Johnson on several occasions. It is like she said, the dogs are trained to use their nose to locate what they have been imprinted to find for us the handler. It is a very environmental condition job being that as the handler we need to be constantly aware of when conditions such as the air currents change and how it can affect how we search with our dogs. Such as searching for human remains that have been well scavenged our techniques could be slower then ground searchers at times. I am, still after 27 years, amazed at the trained search dog.
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