What I Learned This Week [At the Sheriff's Department]

I’ve had one of those weeks where my ‘What I Learned This Week’ post will pretty much write itself.

And it’s a doozy.

I’ll give you a hint about this week’s lessons.

A metal bench, pink hand-cuffs, and leg shackle hooks on the floor.

Any guesses?

=We toured the Sheriff’s Department this evening. That means that I was in my correctional element. Apparently when handcuffs are painted bright pink, street officers don’t ‘forget’ and remove them.

-Fingerprints are now done electronically.

That was not the case when I worked in jail.

-Young boys are very attentive when they are listening to the booking process.

Don’t you just love the new police glasses?

We started our tour in a training room, where one of the scout dads (who is also a detective) gave us a briefing about the general purpose of the Sheriff’s Department.

Then, a K9 officer came in and talked to the boys about his K9 dog, Scout and what it takes to train a K9 dog.

-The dogs are trained in a foreign language. In Scout’s case, German.

This is a training trap.

It contains three wash cloths that have been saturated with drugs.

Scout responds to a command when the K9 officer tells him to find the ‘birdie’.

Scout is also trained to bark upon hearing the officer announce his presence at a home by saying, “K. County Sheriff’s Department”.

-A good K9 trainer trains his dog everyday.

Scout lives with his K9 trainer.

-Scout ALWAYS wins (and gets the birdie) when he is training to insure he never gets bored of playing/training.

-Upon getting a “hit” the drug officer holds the K9 back from actually “getting” the drugs, or else he could ingest some of them and possibly overdose.

When wearing the “bite suit” K9 officers allow other K9 dogs to “bite” them. They never allow their own dogs to practice on them.

K9 dogs are trained to respond to each of the different drugs, starting with marijuana and surprisingly (to me, at least!) they are even trained to find prescription drugs, such as oxycodone.

-Scout works every middle school and high school in our county quarterly. (Shew! That’s a bunch!)

-When a litter of possible K9 dogs are born, a “birdie” is thrown into the mix and the dog who grabs it first and holds on to it, is considered to be a good candidate for K9 training.

K9 trainers play tug-of-war with the ‘birdies’ to encourage possessiveness with the dogs.

Being in the Sheriff’s Department will give this ol’ girl the itch to be right back in the mix.  

Here, the kids try on the ‘bite suit’.

That’s what I learned this week. What did YOU learn?