Drug-sniffing dog shows talent at CHS demo
Students at Carbon High School were in a brief lock-down exercise Thursday morning while a dog named Roy sniffed through the parking lot and hallways, searching for illicit substances. Carbon School District Emergency Manager and Security Supervisor Kenneth Labrum said the checks occur at random times as a deterrent.
“When we do lock-downs and/or a shelter-in-place, we have everybody lock their doors to keep the students in the classrooms,” he said. “We don’t want them just wandering the halls when we have the dog here.” Roy hit on the few items planted by handlers, but nothing else was detected during the exercise.
The three-year-old dog eagerly went about his job under the control of Trooper Mike Terry, who is a canine officer with the Utah Highway Patrol Criminal Interdiction and Canine Team commanded by Sgt. Steve Salas. Sgt. Salas noted the exercise also served as a final outing for the dog, who is scheduled to be certified soon. “He knows all his odors and is ready to go,” Salas declared.
Salas supervises all of the canine teams for Southern Utah, from Nephi to St. George. Utah Law enforcement agencies have 12 dogs statewide, which is the largest K-9 team in the country. Their primarily task is to intercept drugs being trafficked over the interstate highways. Salas reports over the last ten years, canine teams have seized about 5,000 pounds of marijuana. Methamphetamine has become more prevalent lately, and the amount confiscated last year alone topped 500 lbs. “There’s so much meth, it’s crazy,” he commented.
Salas said all of the K-9 team dogs come from Holland. Similar to a Belgian Sheppard, Roy is a Belgian Malinois, the French name for the breed’s city of origin. In Utah, the dogs are trained in control & apprehension, narcotics detection and bomb detection.
Exemplary dogs
Well-raised and trained Malinois are usually active, intelligent, friendly, protective, alert and hard working. According to Wikipedia, The U.S. Secret Service uses the breed to guard the grounds of the White House, and some media sources reported a Belgian Malinois was part of the 80-member team that was deployed to take down Osama Bin Laden. The dog was said to be strapped to a Navy SEAL as they were lowered from a hovering helicopter. The breed is well-known for its bomb-sniffing ability, and can be trained to detect enemy soldiers from miles away.