Area law enforcement adding canine units

I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.

June 30, 1997

By Devlyn Brooks

Staff Writer

BAGLEY -- The future of regional law enforcement is changing, and foremost among those changes is the addition of canine units, allowing already-strapped enforcement agencies to increase personnel with low-cost canine officers.

Most recently, the Hubbard County Sheriff's Department K-9 unit began patrolling a week ago, and the Bagley Police Department received approval to proceed with its plan to implement a K-9 unit next spring.

The Bemidji Police Department and Beltrami County Sheriff's Department previously added K-9 units to their staffs as well.

According to Bagley Police Chief Steve Haugen, the addition of his police dog will effectively increase his staff by one, and greatly improve his department's ability to control drug trafficking -- something difficult for his department to do because of a lack of manpower. Narcotics detection was something that was missing in Hubbard County, as well, said canine Officer Tim Archambault, according to an article in the Park Rapids Enterprise.

"Out in the field we've needed a dog for a while," Bagley's Haugen said in an interview at his office Thursday. "We've had so many incidents where we've needed a dog, but the availability wasn't there. It just wasn't there."

In addition to narcotics detection, both dogs -- Hubbard County's Cruz and Bagley's yet-to-be-added dog -- will be trained in search and rescue and apprehension -- both great assets in a region so full of forests, Haugen said.

"We have a heavily wooded area around town, and children disappear easily," he said. "Because of that, and a large city park and a lot of visitors, there are a certain number of people lost every year."

Previously, Bagley police and the Clearwater County Sheriff's Office borrowed a canine unite from Polk County Sheriff's Department, but they could only use the dog when it was available.

All together, acquiring the dog, training the unit and retrofitting a squad car, among other start-up costs, will total $13,700, according to Haugen. However, it isn't going to cost the city of Bagley anything in the beginning.

Clearwater County has pledged $5,000 toward the purchase and training of the dog, and the Police Department plans to raise other money through a fund-raising event, an asset seizure auction and private donations.

Thereafter, the city will only spend about $500 a year for food and veterinarian costs.

Hubbard County's K-9 team was recently trained at a 13-week session held in Minneapolis, where dogs from a five-state area trained in obedience, article search, agility, aggression, area and building searches, narcotics detection and search and rescue. Cruz was donated to the Sheriff's Office by a Bloomington, Minn., family.

According to Haugen, Bagley's dog will come from Hungary pretrained, and the K-9 unit will attend an intensive six-week course at Evansville, Ind., to learn the same skills.

"This will be a real good shot in the arm for us and the counties that don't have (a dog)," Haugen said. "Soon, when we go to a person's house for drugs, we'll have a big smiley face, and when we leave the people won't be smiling. Before, the people were smiling when we left, and we weren't."