With the growing concerns over illegal drugs on our streets, no police department is complete without a police K-9 unit. Our K-9 unit consists of four German Shepherds which are trained in narcotics detection, tracking, building searches, area searches, article/evidence recovery, criminal apprehension and handler protection. Each dog resides at the residence of the handler to ensure a strong bond between the team.

Our canine unit training program is supervised by a CJSTC certified K-9 Training team Instructor/Evaluator. Training sessions provide realistic scenarios to maintain proficiency. Quarterly evaluations are conducted in-house to verify the ability of each team to perform their various tasks. Each team undergoes a yearly re-evaluation by CJSTC certified evaluators. During 2003, the unit conducted 649 hours of in-service training.

During 2003 our canines were deployed approximately 561 times for narcotics related searches with 290 positive responses. The canines were deployed for general duties 65 times with 13 deployments resulting in arrests.