When minutes matter, police K-9s can help make a fast, safe arrest.
“Our number one goal, honestly, is community safety,” said Officer George Weaver with the Helena Police Department.
Officer Weaver’s K-9 partner is Billy, a Belgian Malinois trained to apprehend suspects and detect explosives.
“Lots of training where we’re getting to know each other,” Weaver said. “We’re basically conjoined at the hip 24/7.”
Training a K-9 is no small task. They are trained before they hit the street with the police department. They’re required to do 16 hours of training per month with their handlers, although the Helena police K-9 unit often surpasses that requirement.
“My job as K-9 Copper's handler is to get him as comfortable in these different environments as possible, so that he is exposed to the greatest amount of variety so that he can do his job,” said Officer John Strandberg.
Copper is trained to detect narcotics, and the department’s other K-9, Angus, is an apprehension and explosives detection dog, like Billy.
“Another tool on our officers and our allied agencies' toolbelt,” said Sgt. Jacob Scavone. “Just like our tasers or our pepper spray, that kind of stuff. It’s a less lethal option to apprehend violent suspects.”
Helena police K-9s can get called out to a variety of calls.
“When we get these types of calls, each handler understands we basically have a checklist of what we have to go through, because we don’t just bring our K-9 out for everything,” Weaver said.
For example, Officer Weaver and K-9 Billy were called out to a standoff between Helena-Lewis and Clark County SWAT and an armed suspect in York.
According to Officer Weaver, it was a high-risk situation where officer safety was a priority, and this is just another method to de-escalate the high-risk situation.
“So when we use these K-9s, it helps everyone in totality become safer, not only just for us, but for the suspect and for the community all around,” Weaver said.
