K-9 team partners against crime

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When you are a police officer, there’s a chance you’ll be partnered with someone whose ‘bark is worse than his bite.’ In Officer Melissa Drane’s case that’s a good thing, since she is Maricopa Police Department’s only K-9 officer, and her partner, Officer Kasper, is a Belgian Malinois.

At the end of October Drane will have 20 years of service with various city, state and tribal departments. She spent 10 years as a detective, three of them working undercover narcotics. Drane has been a K-9 handler for four years with a little over a year in Maricopa with Kasper.

“Kasper and I had about three weeks of bonding time before we started our (eight week) training, so we established a pretty good working relationship right away,” said Drane. “Bonding time is essentially constant time spent as a team to build trust and learn each other’s temperament and personality.”

What duties does a K-9 unit perform? According to the MPD reports from the past four months, Drane and Kasper have participated in traffic stops when Kasper was used to do a sniff search for drugs, residential searches for drugs and/or paraphernalia, holding groups of undocumented Mexican nationals until additional deputies or the Border Patrol arrived, searching for a missing elderly woman and clearing business sites following alarm calls.

Kasper lives with Drane, “absolutely an animal lover,” and her two other dogs, but he requires stricter boundaries. “He doesn’t get free run, partly to keep his work drive high. If he gets too comfortable at home, he won’t want to come to work!”

Drane says that K-9 handlers are taught their dogs are “tools” of the trade, but she doesn’t know many handlers who consider their dogs anything but a real partner, 24 hours a day. “These dogs will give their lives, without hesitation, for their handlers; no other “tool” of our trade will do that.”

Kasper is trained to protect Drane and keep an eye on her at all times.  Sometimes, when she is on her lunch break, eating inside an establishment, or even getting gas, people complain that she is leaving her barking dog inside a hot vehicle with the windows rolled up.

Nothing could be further from the truth as the K-9 truck has two dedicated air conditioners with thermostats monitoring the temperature (70-74 degrees) and a heat alarm hooked up to a pager Drane wears on her belt.  Should the pager fail, lights and sirens go off on the truck, and a fan comes on inside it.

“I am always asked if Kasper is barking so much because he’s hot,” said Drane. “Kasper is barking because he can’t see me. When I am out of sight, he barks. He is very protective of me, our home and the K-9 truck, so when someone gets too close, he goes on the offensive and is prepared to defend his territory.”

A K-9 handler will generally retire in that position, unless they choose to take another type of assignment. Once the K-9 is unable to work due to age or health issues, he is retired out to the handler and finally gets to become a full-time pet. Currently MPD allows the handler to maintain that position for the natural life or career of the animal. If the K-9 dies or is killed in the line of duty, the position will reopen with a new K-9, but the previous handler can apply for that assignment.

In February Drane was named the local VFW post’s police officer of the year, nominated by her department for going above and beyond the call of duty, putting in countless hours off the clock to help launch the city’s first K-9 unit.

At the ceremony MPD Chief Kirk Fitch described Drane: “She has a tremendous super positive attitude and is a fine example of the type of officers in the Maricopa Police Department.”

For Drane the worst thing about being a K-9 officer is easy: “pooper scooping and cleaning the kennel.”

She found it difficult to name a single best thing about her job. “There are so many things I love about it. To me, this is the best assignment in the law enforcement field.”

Photo courtesy of Maricopa Police Department 

A version of this article appeared in the September issue of InMaricopa News.