K-9 leads busy life with NBPD
NEW BREMEN — New Bremen Police Officer Justin Bruns paid a visit to the New Bremen New Knoxville Rotary Club meeting on Tuesday and brought along a buddy of his.
His buddy goes by the name of “Doc,” which is the police department’s K-9.
Doc is a four-and-ahalf year old German Shepherd and he was born in the Czech Republic.
Bruns, who was hired as a part-time officer in 2010, was promoted to full-time in 2015.
In 2018, Doc was brought on to the department when he was 13 months old and Bruns volunteered to be his handler.
Bruns said initially he completed six weeks of training with Doc at Von der Haus Gill near Uniopolis. Prior to that, Bruns said that the dog had some experience with obedience and tracking, but had no drug work experience.
Originally, Doc was trained in the Czech language, but Bruns transferred him over to receive commands in German.
“He’s a dual-purpose dog. He can bite, he can track, area search, [do] building search, [search for] drugs,” said Bruns.
Bruns gave a brief rundown of felony cases within New Bremen, both prior to having a K-9 on the force and after.
“Prior to 2014, we had no felony cases for any kind of drug work,” he said. “In 2015, there were eight felony cases but only two of those were drug charges. There were three possession of marijuana [charges] which is a minor misdemeanor. In 2016, we had 14 total charges and only nine of those were drug cases.”
In 2017, the year before getting Doc, the village had a total of six felony cases and only one of those was a drug charge.
In 2018, the village had 15 possession of drug paraphernalia charges and 17 possession of marijuana charges.
“[We had] five felony cases, two were drug charges and that was the first year we had him,” said Bruns.
In 2019, the department had two possessions of paraphernalia,
three possessions of marijuana and two felony possessions of drugs. The year 2020
saw five drug charges for juveniles; five possessions of drug paraphernalia; seven possessions of some kind of illegal drug and four felony of possession drug charges.
In 2021, Bruns said he and Doc have had 53 deployments, with 13 of those being callouts where he gets called from his house.
While Doc gets used mostly in New Bremen, he’s seen action in all parts of the county including helping out with St. Marys Police Department, the Auglaize County Sheriff’s Office and the Ohio State Highway Patrol.
Bruns said he helped the highway patrol out on an area search on Goshen Road near New Hampshire, over 30 miles away from the village limits.
“A guy ended up wrecking into a cornfield and turns out he was drunk and I was just helping there. I was the only dog working for Auglaize County at the time so we’re going all the way to New Hampshire to be able to use him. That was a pretty good experience,” said Bruns. “The guy ended up wrecking, fleeing and I got him (Doc) out and did an area search down a creek line to see if he was going to pick up on a scent of this guy to see where he took off running to.”
Bruns said he didn’t send Doc in to the cornfield because the suspect supposedly had a gun and Bruns didn’t want to send him into a “lose-lose situation.”
Along with tracks conducted in New Knoxville and on Greenville Road near the aqueduct in St. Marys, Bruns said Doc does have one apprehension under his belt.
“Essentially, my dog got to bite somebody,” he said. Bruns explained that a guy, who had three felony warrants, had barricaded himself in a basement in St. Marys and was possibly wielding a knife.
“I gave my commands and was able to send my dog into this basement and Doc was able to get a bite. We went down and ended up arresting the guy,” he said. “The last resort is using the dog. It’s a tool for us to have and it worked out well. They found a knife and the guy ended up putting it somewhere else where we couldn’t see. It worked out that we were able to get the guy with no injuries.”
As for continued training, Bruns says he does obedience training with Doc and eight other dogs and he’s used often for school searches.
Near the end of his presentation, Bruns completed a search activity with Doc. He had laid out three different bags on the floor, with one containing roughly 10 or 11 grams of meth.
Bruns has access to different types of drugs for Doc’s training purposes.
“For us to get these drugs, it’s a process,” he said. “We have to fill out a bunch of paperwork … and we do this every two years to get re-certified. We do not train on any kind of synthetic drug. Everything we train on here is the real drug.”
Bruns said Doc is certified in marijuana, crack cocaine, regular cocaine, heroin and meth.
Bruns gave his command and Doc, after just a few seconds, located the correct bag and laid on top of it, signaling the correct bag.
Bruns then pulled out a piece of cutdown fire hose and gave it to Doc for him to chew on, calling it his “dope toy.”
“This is what we use when we search a vehicle, I give him his dope toy and this is his reward,” he said. “A dog is very keen on praising. They love the happy praising. It makes him want to come back and do it again. He’ll chew on his toy, he loves this thing.”