K-9 Training time- Area K-9 units descend on Hillsboro for a chance to sharpen their skills as dogs

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN DON RATZLAFF
(Photos by Don Ratzlaff:

Top- Brad Richards (left) watches as partner Scott Wheatley from Osawatomie gives his dog some extra leash as it tries to track its hidden ‘kong’ along North Ash.

Bottom- Richards and Rico take their turn tracking Rico’s kong as Scott Wheatley from Osawatomie follows a few steps behind. The trail led them into the alley behind Casey’s General Store. A city garbage truck and two neighborhood dogs didn’t keep Rico from finding his toy, which was buried along the alley.)

Hillsboro was swarming with K-9 units from about a half-dozen area law-enforcement agencies last Tuesday, but no arrests were made.

That’s because the officers and their dogs were participating in a routine training event that happened to be located in Hillsboro this time.

Officer Brad Richards of the Hillsboro Police Department, the primary handler for HPD’s detection dog, Rico, played host during the event, which started around 9 a.m. and lasted to around 3:30 p.m.

Also participating were K-9 units from Newton, Geary County, Junction City, Osawatomie and Salina, as well as a federal officer out of Wichita.

Richards said training events are held frequently for K-9 units-even weekly for some departments.

“They try to hold them in different places so the dogs get used to working in unfamiliar territory,” he said.

Each of the dogs and its handler took their turns participating in four different activities.

The first one was tracking. After K-9 units were paired off, an officer from one unit walked a trail several hundred feet long to hide a dog toy called a “kong.”

The officer and dog from the other K-9 unit were then given the task of tracking down the toy-not by scent per se, but by sniffing for ground disturbances.

The handler and dog work together until the kong is found-which is the dog’s only reward for success.

The group then moved to an empty apartment in the 300 block of North Ash Street to test the dogs’ ability to sniff out targets-in this case a human being-in a living situation where odors from a variety of people and pets have accumulated over the years.

One at a time, each dog searched through every room in the apartment, including “dry” rooms that contained no target. Richards said the exercise helps ensure the dog is tracking the desired target.

After that event, the group moved to several abandoned houses Tabor College is preparing to remove along the 400 block of South Adams.

In this instance, the dogs were searching for varying quantities of methamphetamines, cocaine and marijuana hidden in low, medium and high locations.

In each case, the substances are put in plastic bags. The bags mask the aroma for the drugs, but handlers work to ensure the dogs are tracking the drugs themselves and not the scent of the plastic bags.

Hillsboro Assistant Police Chief Jessey Hiebert also brought in a sizeable quantity of shredded currency with light traces of drug substances. Richards said the theory is that people who distribute drugs often leave tell-tale evidence on the money they handle.

“Rico will hit on that very well,” he said.

As a final activity, the group went to Hillsboro High School to work on detecting heroin in student lockers. About 100 lockers were included in the search for 81 percent proof heroin.

The dogs also searched lockers in shower rooms.

Richards said Hiebert is licensed by the Drug Enforcement Agency to handle quantities of heroin for such training exercises, but is required to remain on site while the test is under way.

Richards said Hillsboro residents who came across the training exercises were “very interested” to find out what was going on.

He said publicizing these kind of events helps to inform the public, but also sends a message to lawbreakers that law enforcement officers in Hillsboro and surrounding towns are equipped and trained to provide these kinds of detection strategies.

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