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Police Department welcomes police dog Kai to team

Date: 11/19/2015

LONGMEADOW – The Police Department’s newest addition is Kai, a 21-month-old Belgian shepherd K9 unit and the department’s first police dog.

Police Officer and K9 handler Amanda VanBuskirk told Reminder Publications she and Kai went through training during an eight-week program set up by the North American Police Work Dog Association.

Subject areas included aggression control, building searches, tracking, area searches, and an ability to find articles or objects belonging to suspects.

VanBuskirk and Kai were joined by a K9 and handler from the Ware Police Department during the training, she said.

“We were the first all female patrol school,” she noted.

She added that tracking includes not only looking for suspects, but also locating missing persons.

“The way he tracks is off the freshest scent, so when we approach a crime scene if we’re looking for a suspect we’re looking for possible routes that they might have taken to get out of a building,” VanBuskirk said.

She added that Kai’s scent detection is also determined by factors such as weather.

“If there’s been a lot of people that have walked along [a] track, it kind of dissipates that human scent,” she explained. “Every time you walk, you drop thousands of epithelial [cells] as your walking. Not only is he picking up on your human scent, but he’s also picking up on crushed vegetation that you’ve stepped on or cologne or deodorants.”

“Each person has their own distinct scent, but its not really certain how long that scent can stay there for,” she continued.

VanBuskirk said K9s could also pick up on the scents of suspects in areas with low visibility that handlers would have a hard time locating.

There wasn’t much time between when VanBuskirk picked up Kai at Shallow Creek Kennels in northwestern Pennsylvania, near the Ohio state line, and when the two started patrol school – she picked him up on a Friday and on Monday training began, she said.

“We only had a couple days to bond with him before we started school,” she noted. “A lot of people get a couple months to work their dogs.”

Despite a short amount of time for the two to bond, VanBuskirk said she and Kai are a well-established team approximately two weeks after completing patrol school.

VanBuskirk described Kai’s personality as “dopey” and friendly to children, but a hard worker during police work.

“He’s still a puppy so he still trips when he walks,” she added. “He just loves playing with toys and he can go out in my yard and throw a toy around by himself and entertain himself for hours. He’s a very hard worker and he’s very smart. He almost makes my job easy because he just loves what he does so much and he’s so good at it.”

VanBuskirk said Kai only responds to commands in Dutch in order to ensure that suspects cannot give him commands while the two are on patrol.

Kai will specialize in drug detection in the future, which would include controlled substances such as heroin, ecstasy and cocaine, she noted.  

“Those types of drugs have honestly become very rampant around this area,” VanBuskirk said. “We’ve had a lot of overdoses recently so we’re hoping to bring down that crime and help keep our citizens a little more safe and reduce exposure to children in town here too.”

 She added that she hopes the general public would feel safe knowing that the department has Kai as an extra tool to utilize in law enforcement.

Police Chief John Stankiewicz said Kai is a great addition to the department and provide new ways to locate suspects and missing persons.

VanBuskirk said funding for the K9 program came from a $25,000 Stanton Foundation grant for three years. After that time, the department would include the program as part of its budget.

“My goal is to fundraise and to get donations so we can keep the program up and running,” she added. “That is not going to even cost the town a dime.”