A police officer resorted to a rather unusual technique in an attempt to get wanted teens to surrender.
Bodycam footage from a Washington State police officer has gone viral on social media for the most obvious of reasons.
The suspects the cops were hunting down had taken refuge in a wooded area last month in a bid to hide themselves from being captured.
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Unable to locate them, one of the officers decided to try and bluff the teens with a rather unorthodox strategy. Take a look:
While shouting out at the teens to surrender, who were believed to have stolen a car, he called out: "Don't make us release our K-9s!" - referring, of course, to police dogs.
The officer then proceeded to bark like a dog in an attempt to convince the teens that they did, indeed, have dogs with them.
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They don't teach you that at Police Academy!
Except the officer's 'barking' was less than convincing, sounding about one woof away from shouting 'Shaggy?!' into the woods. A voice artist he was not.
But even more astonishingly, despite the less than convincing performance it appears that the two suspects were actually duped by the impression.
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The video goes on to show them exiting from the undergrowth and surrendering to the officers.
They go on to tell deputies that they actually believed that there was a dog there with the officers.
The footage was posted to the Pierce County Sheriff's Department's Facebook page, with Sgt. Darren Moss Jr. saying: "The kids actually believed there was a dog, and, in the end, they told the deputies, 'Man, soon as I heard that dog, I gave up'."
Despite the teens being taken in to custody, people online were less than convinced by the barking.
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One wrote: "I can't believe them kids believed there was a dog. That was a horrible bark. He sounded like a wounded hound dog."
Another wrote: "How did they believe that was a dog?"
And a third said: "Worst dog imitation I've ever heard."
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However, one other person was quick to point out that even though the impression was less than convincing, it still got the job done.
They wrote: "If it works, it's not stupid."
In fairness, it's one thing listening to something online and quite another when you're hiding from the police in the woods, and probably more than a little nervous.
On the other hand, you might stop to wonder why the dogs were so polite that they only barked when the officers stopped talking.
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Pierce County Sheriff's Department has not revealed any details about the suspects' identities or the charges that they could be facing after their arrests.
Kit Roberts