CULLMAN – The Cullman Police Department just introduced the new patrol dog, Recon, a Belgian Malinois, who will be two years old in January. Recon is certified in narcotics detection, tracking and criminal apprehension. His handler is Officer Jeff Lawson.
The K9 program has been utilized at the CPD since 1984. Sergeant Jason Mickle, training officer at the CPD said, “Tony Simmons had our first dog, and we’ve had K9s the majority of the time since then. We’ve had a few breaks where we have not had dogs, but we’ve had them off and on ever since I’ve been in the department.” There are currently two dogs at the department – Recon which is Lawson’s, and Mickle’s dog who is about to be retired. They are looking to replace Mickle’s dog this year and soon have two dogs back on the road.
The training process that Lawson and Recon just completed included a basic class of eight weeks. Mickle said that the dogs have some initial training from Europe. “We bought our dogs through a vendor from Huntsville, her name is Pam Rogers, and she goes over to Europe and tests the dogs. There is a very in depth selection process that they’ve got to go through to be a patrol candidate for the program,” Mickle said. Even after the training process, the dogs must gain experience with their handler.
“Once they’re out on the street, it still takes another year for them to gain the experience that they need to be a veteran road dog. It’s kind of like equating a police officer that goes through the police academy. When we send an officer to the police academy, technically he knows everything that he needs to do his job, he just doesn’t have the experience. That’s kind of where Recon is now. He knows everything that he needs to know to do his job, but the next year is going to be very important in maintaining his training, keeping everything up to date, and reinforcing it through the next year.”
The department has had as many as four dogs at one time, but usually averages around two. Mickle said, “Typically we stay around two dogs because of the way our patrol shifts are set up.” The department retired one of their dogs about a month ago after she suffered an injury. The patrol dog usually stays with the department for 5-7 years. “Recon is 2 and he could work until he is 7 to 9 years old, then we would retire him and start a new dog,” Mickle said.
The dogs are considered vital to the department and are trained to do various tasks in order to serve adequately. “The biggest thing that the dogs do for us is that they’re a locator tool. They help us find things that would be difficult for us to find and they do it a lot quicker and a lot more efficiently than we could do on our own,” Mickle said.
“We’ve got dual purpose dogs which means they’re used for drug detection and for patrol work.” He said that locating illegal narcotics is one of the things that Jeff just trained Recon to do. Recon is certified to locate marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin. The dogs are also trained to locate human scent.
“If we have someone that we’re looking for such as a felon, and say it’s at the end of a long car chase or something like that, we can use the dogs to track the felon down.” The dogs are also used in burglary type situations. If a homeowner arrives and the door to their home has been kicked in, the dog is sent in the home first because it can locate human scent if the burglar is hiding. “The dog is going to be able to detect that,” Mickle said.
“The primary thing is to locate narcotics and people and then they [the dogs] can also be used to apprehend people.” Mickle gave an example of a traffic stop situation where the subject may try to fight the officer. At this point the handler can send his dog, and the dog will bite and hold on to the subject until an officer can get there and take the subject into custody.
For any questions, the Cullman Police Department can be reached at 256-734-1434 and is located at 601 2nd Ave NE, Cullman, AL 35056.
