K9 Program
K9 Program and "Name the K9" Competition
The K9 program is up and running. School Police Officer Norma Bautista was selected to be School PD's first ever K9 handler and she has been paired up with her new partner, K9 "Copper." Their training is complete and the team will be visiting school sites for demos and actual searches. Copper is a two year old male yellow Labrador retriever. He is full of energy and loves to play - musts for a drug and weapons detection dog.
“Copper’s” name was selected through a competition among our elementary school kids. The elementary school principals and teachers did a GREAT job getting the kids involved and school police received several hundred suggested names from the kids. We chose “Copper” for a variety of reasons including the copper coloring in his coat, the fact that once fully trained he will be a “(Cop)per,” and the term cop actually derives from the first police department established in London, England in 1829. The citizens of London referred to the officers as “bobbies” (in honor of the department’s founder Sir “Robert” Peele) and “coppers” because of the shiny copper buttons attached to their uniforms. Interestingly, four different kids from four different schools picked this name for our dog so it looks like it was meant to be. The kids and schools both received awards and
each winning child was given a ride to school in our new K9 unit with Officer Bautista and K9 Copper.
Drug and Weapons Detection K9 Program
The school board at the December 2006 meeting voted the approval to implement
a K9 program. The dog will be able to identify
drugs, weapons, and explosives. The dog will be trained to be a “passive alert” dog, which means the dog will simply lay down next to the object being examined if the dog wants to alert the handler that it has discovered contraband. I am confident our school district will come to value our program. It will give us great flexibility in using the dog randomly, frequently, and at the specific request of site administrators. Feel free to contact Chief Ramsey directly if you have any questions about the program.
