NEW BERLIN – The Town of New Berlin Police Department hopes to add two different K-9 units over the next year as one officer finalizes his training and another is just beginning.
Four-year part-time veteran Corporal Robert L. Jones and his partner, a Schutzhund German Shepherd named Bruno, are nearing the end of their training and will be tested for national certification this fall.
In the last 12 months, Bruno and Jones having been working towards certification as New Berlin’s only drug detection K-9 at the Southern Tier K-9 Association’s facility in Binghamton.
Soon New Berlin Officer Thomas Miller, also part-time, will be joining his colleague at the training ground with Nitro, an eight-month-old pure bred German Shepherd.
Both Jones and Miller have dedicated their own free time and money to obtaining, providing for and training the animals. The officers expect to spend thousands of dollars before the dogs earn certification. They must also engage in a constant training schedule during the average dog’s estimated 10 years of service, to ensure their skills remained honed.
“Why am I doing this? We need it, we just plain need it. It’ll make our job of local drug enforcement much easier here (in New Berlin) in the long run. We have serious drug problems in the local community and a dog can make a huge difference,” said Jones.
“I’ve always wanted to be a K-9 handler,” said Miller. “There are a lot of different things they’re useful for, the obvious is deterring and apprehending drug criminals. If people know we have the dog they know it’s an incredible enforcement tool and they know to avoid them,” he said.
Miller explained that apart from criminal enforcement he looks forward to taking Nitro to community and educational events, such as area schools and parks. “As much as criminals don’t like them the community seems to enjoy having a dog around,” said Miller.
The officer said the dogs offered a lot of potential in crime prevention, as an interesting tool in public education as well as criminal deterrent.
Miller said he was confronted by a number of enthusiastic children and curious parents when he took the young pup to the New Berlin Youth Day Celebration a few weeks earlier.
Miller has been a police officer for the last three years working part time in New Berlin and full time for the Norwich City Police. This is not the first time Miller has personally invested his own money in developing his law enforcement career. He was sponsored by the New Berlin PD to go to the police academy three years ago but paid for the training himself. Miller completed the police training, finishing third in his class.
“I wanted to be a police officer, I took the local tests and waited. I wanted to go to the academy and with New Berlin as my sponsor I paid for it myself. When I completed the program I was almost immediately offered a position with the Norwich PD,” he said.
Though the two officer’s have entered into the programs without any guarantees of financial support from the municipality New Berlin’s officer in charge, Dominick Commesso said the department was always on the look out for financial aid, in the form of grants.
The PD was recently awarded two grants from the Bryne JAG Recovery and the Operation IMPACT Tool legislative initiative. The combined $27,285 in funds was received in Aug. and can be spent after Oct. 1.
Commesso explained that $10,000 of the grant would be dedicated to refitting one of New Berlin’s vehicles for the K-9 unit and any remaining amounts would help pay for additional drug detection training.
“We invested in long term canine equipment, refit cages into the patrol vehicle, a light bar, K-9 search and rescue gear and GPS,” said Commesso. The funds will also be used in purchasing a number of drug test kits used in the field that help officers identify suspicious substances at the scene. “Obviously you might imagine we go through these pretty quickly and we always need more,” he said.
The remaining $17,285 will pay for the purchased a new plate reader and its installation. The device can instantly read a vehicle’s license plate number and cross reference it with a New York State data base, checking for proper insurance and registration.
“A number of police departments in the area have already installed the equipment and like those places experienced we’re probably going to get a large volume of offender’s at first that’ll hopefully trail off once the word gets out,” said Commesso.
Commesso applauded the efforts of his staff for their personal involved with the canines. He said the town could not repay the men for their expenses but hoped to find more grants to help pay for their additional training in the future.
“These guys invested their time and money in helping out their community, the least we can do is see if their isn’t any aid we get for them,” he said.