Citizen’s Police Academy – Week Seven
Today we talked about Emergency Vehicle Operations (EVO) and was also introduced to the K-9 unit. The EVO portion of the class was pretty straight-forward and he went over a lot of basics.
I was most impressed with the K-9 Unit presentation. I found out that a lot of police dogs are actually imported from around the world. One of the dogs was from the Czech Republic, another was from the Netherlands, and one from Germany. Apparently the blood-line from those countries are of a much stronger breed which makes them excellent hunting/narcotics dogs. The K-9 trainer at Carmel PD prefers German Shepherds because they are the easiest to train and have more control.
We learned that you never want to mess with a police dog, as they’ve been trained very well. One time a man walked up to the K-9 officer and extended his hand to shake the officer’s hand… apparently the dog took this as a threatening move and bit the guy. The dogs are also very protective of their human partners. Let’s say the officer is doing a traffic stop and the person gets out and starts attacking the officer. The officer carries a remote with them that can pop open the door and release the dog.
The dogs do a lot. There was one time in Cicero where a suspect was hiding out in an attic. They had the dog sit on a SWAT shield and two officers lifted the dog up into the attic to search for the suspect. Can you imagine that? Hiding out in the attic and all of the sudden you see a dog’s head pop up? Ha ha!
Unfortunately I forgot to bring my video camera, so all I have are still pictures. But I did find a video produced by the NYPD which can give you a better idea of the K-9 unit and show them in action. So enjoy the video and enjoy the pictures!
