New Haven K-9 has a nose for evidence

NEW HAVEN, Ind. (AP) - New Haven's newest police officer has been on the job for a little over a month, so he's still a bit wet behind the ears - and on the nose.

But a wet nose is to be expected from Archie, the city's new K-9 cop - a specially trained German shepherd who's expected to prove his worth many times over, according to his partner in law enforcement, New Haven Patrolman Zachary Moord.

"I don't have a human partner," Moord said this month before his typical evening shift, which ends around 11 p.m. "He's my partner. He works when I work, and he's with me every day."

Archie, Moord said, can point to suspected illegal drugs hidden in a vehicle during a traffic stop. He can help find items of evidence, such as a discarded money wrapper or a gun used in a robbery.

He can corral a suspect or help locate a missing child or wandering adult by training on the scent of a piece of clothing.

But in New Haven, said Police Chief Henry McKinnon, an avid supporter of canine officers, the dog is just as likely to serve as an ambassador of goodwill and source of increased comfort for officers.

The benefits of police dogs are something the department has missed lately. New Haven has one other K-9, Henry, who works with Officer Jon Wenzel. But in the last few years, one dog, Armor, who worked with Sgt. Brent Bollinger, died.

Another, Remi, who was retired along with his patrol officer, Scott Adam, because of health problems, died last week and is now memorialized on the sign in front of the department.

The city has had K-9 officers since 1981, and in 2015 hosted an international conference for 125 teams of dogs and their handlers sponsored by the American Police Dog Association. Donations are used to help support the program.

McKinnon said one New Haven police dog located a large amount of narcotics in a joint investigation by New Haven and Fort Wayne police and the Allen County Sheriff's Department.

But an underappreciated aspect of dogs, he added, is their ability to calm a potentially dicey situation.

"There's something psychological having a dog on scene," McKinnon said. Dogs tend to be an organizing factor when there's a large, potentially chaotic group of people. "Sometimes they're the difference between a guy taking off and saying, 'Hey, I think I'm going to skip running,'?" he said.

Moord said a dog is good company for New Haven officers who otherwise patrol solo.

They cover relatively spread-out territory that includes residential developments, retail centers and industrial properties, he said.

K-9 officers are called in as backup on traffic stops. And, even on a routine call, such as an open door or an alarm sounding at a warehouse at night, having a dog have your back "makes you feel safer," he said.

Plus, there's nothing like a beautiful, chocolate-brown shepherd in the back of a car to draw kids and adults alike while patrolling a neighborhood or near a school.

Getting Archie, however, wasn't simple. It took more than a year. The dog was imported from Europe, probably Poland, by FMK9, Moord said. The business, near Elkhart, specializes in such transactions, which require months of health quarantine and dogs at least a year old.

Among police agencies, European dogs are often seen as superior, because of carefully guarded bloodlines, Moord said.

"Most departments around here get dogs from Europe. In Europe, dogs are not just bred to be a pet in the house," he said. They're bred "to have a job to do."

Archie and Moord completed 14 weeks of full-time training. As the officer learned to "read" the dog's reactions, gain its trust and spot medical problems, the dog learned basic obedience commands.

"Sit," ''stay" and "heel" form the foundation of more sophisticated training such as identifying scents and how to "alert" - sit or lie motionless and stare at the area of a suspicious object, even if it's hidden from view.

Dogs also learn a "bite" protocol - how to apprehend a dangerous person - while officers learn when and how to deploy the dog.

Some dogs are even being trained to find cellphones, tablets, CDs, DVDs, Blu-Rays, memory chips and hard drives of today's electronics. The K-9s are known as "sniff-and-seize" detector dogs or, sometimes, e-dogs.

Such dogs are trained in scents of chemicals used in electronics. Trainers and the courts are still learning what the dogs can, and cannot, do.

But investigators credited Bear, an e-trained black Labrador with sniffing out a hidden thumb drive when officers searched the Zionsville home of former Subway spokesman Jared Fogle in 2015 for evidence of crimes involving child pornography and sex with minors.

"It's very structured, what we do day to day, because it's building day to day," Moord said of his and Archie's training. "It's a lot of hard work. It's a lot to take in, and you have to keep at it every day. But it's also rewarding."

Moord, who grew up in New Haven, was a Waterloo police officer for two years before joining the New Haven department. When he heard of the opportunity to work with a dog, Moord jumped at the chance.

"It was what sparked me to go into police work," he said.

Archie goes home with him at the end of his shift and sleeps in a kennel away from his other dogs, a French bulldog and a pit bull.

Young family members also are kept at a distance so his role as a working dog is reinforced, although that can be a challenge, Moord said.

"Archie hasn't been here very long, and we haven't had any apprehensions yet. But I've seen them done, and I know this dog, and I know it's coming," he said.

"There's a spark in Archie, and he's going to do very well."

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Source: The (Fort Wayne) Journal Gazette, http://bit.ly/2jSjZiZ

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Information from: The Journal Gazette, http://www.journalgazette.net