SOUTH BEND, IN (WSBT) — Indiana State Police dogs could soon be in a new training facility.
The Downtown South Bend Rotary Club hosted the ISP police dogs and handlers to show off just what they have learned in training.
There are more than 52 active police dogs on the Indiana State Police force.
Indiana State Police seek facility to train for police dogs for law enforcement duties
They are trained to look for missing people, narcotics, weapons, bombs and even something as small as a computer chip.
The specialized officers spend more than three months in their initial training plus ongoing training throughout their service life. They come from overseas and are German Shepherds, Belgian Malinois and Dutch Shepherds.
The dogs arrive untrained and learn alongside their handler while building trust.
The police dogs cost thousands of dollars with the department investing even more to have them on the force.
We train the handlers and then the handlers train the dogs. And just like your dogs at home, we start out with obedience, set, stay, and then we gradually add different other capabilities like the older ones. But before we even buy the dog, we know what specifically they’re going to be trained for,” said Dennis Wade, first sergeant, K-9 coordinator for the Indiana State Police.
Dogs just like Zoia are a multi-purpose canine.
“She’s a multi-purpose trained, so she’s trained in suspect apprehension, building searches, tracks for suspects as well as missing persons, and she’s also trained in detecting and alerting to narcotics,” said Trooper Brett Adair, Zoia’s handler.
Zoia has been on the job for about six and a half years.
Police dogs can serve for many years and only retire when their handlers notice a decline.
When they do retire, many go home with their handlers. Although many retired working dogs don’t understand what that means. They spend most of their years by the side of their handler.
There was a pursuit of someone through a gun. And multiple officers had been out for a better part of an hour looking for this gun and I couldn’t find it. And I brought Zoia and I deployed her and two minutes later we found the gun,” said Adair.
Using a police dog as a tool can solve a case, save someone’s life, protect their human partners and deter the possibility of a situation escalating.
There is no set date yet for the construction of the new facility. Fundraising in currently ongoing.
More information about the new facility can be found at this website.