Moments after an alleged gang member unloaded a .380-caliber handgun in Roxbury on Friday night, one of the city’s newest paw soldiers against gun violence found the hidden firearm, cops say.

Police said officers raced to St. James Street about 7:14 p.m. after callers reported hearing four shots fired. When cops arrived, they found a group of men leaving the woods and a white Lexus parked in a private lot.

Boston police officer George Boggs and K-9 Peggy, a Labrador retriever trained by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, hunted the area, honing in on the parking lot. Peggy, trained to sniff out explosives, hit on the left front wheel of a Chevrolet Tahoe parked next to the suspects’ Lexus. Inside the truck’s wheel well, cops spotted the grip of the .380 pistol.

Police said the gun was dry, though it was raining throughout the day.

Three ATF dogs are a new addition to the city’s K-9 force and focus on hunting explosives, which include gunpowder. The additional dogs let police hunt for traces of explosives and firearms sometimes hours after the items have been removed from an area.

In this case, police said, the retriever managed to get a gun off the street before the shooter was able to retrieve it, undoubtedly preventing more gun violence.

Somerset - After a seven-year haul, the police department should receive its accreditation from the Massachusetts Police Accreditation Commission in the next month or two, Police Chief Joseph C. Ferreira said Friday.

The Massachusetts Police Accreditation Commission is part of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and sets standards for the state’s law enforcement agencies wishing to become certified or accredited.

The Massachusetts program is based on national standards set by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies. Certification and accreditation also allow an independent evaluation of an agency’s operations to ensure departments are operating in a professional, standard manner, and to enable an agency to judge its performance.
The certification level was developed in 2001 to aid agencies that wanted to be recognized for their caliber and wished to start the process of accreditation.