Hertfordshire policeman honoured with national award
A policeman from Hertfordshire has scooped a top national award for his work for the criminal justice system.
PC Kevin Moore, who works predominantly with the Travelling community, has helped to increase trust and confidence while raising awareness of Traveller culture.
Working with members of the Travelling community to establish positive relationships, he has introduced local officers to the sites, breaking down barriers between police and the community.
PC Kevin Moore has also provided colleagues with operational practical advice, removing damaging cultural misunderstanding and considerably reducing tensions within the Travelling community.
At a ceremony held in London on Tuesday, BBC Crimewatch’s Fiona Bruce presented an award to PC Moore for outstanding individual commitment to diversity.
PC Moore, who was also recognised at a local awards ceremony this week, said: “I’m very surprised and extremely proud.
“I don’t think I could have done this without the support of the organisation I work for and the community we work with.”
The Justice Awards ceremony, part of Inside Justice Week which runs from October 17-24, boasts a top level judging panel including the Home Secretary, the Lord Chancellor and the Attorney General.
The Attorney General, Baroness Scotland, said: “The quality of the work of all the finalists was tremendous.
“The Justice Awards exemplifies the dedication of staff and volunteers across the Criminal Justice System to making communities better.”
Another finalist for a Justice Award was the Choices and Consequences Partnership, which managed to come second in the Partnership of the Year team award. Highly commended for its efforts over the past two years, it was particularly recognised for its innovative programme for prolific non-violent offenders who want to change their lifestyle and achieve long-term crime reduction.
Chief Constable of Hertfordshire Constabulary, Frank Whiteley, said: “We are incredibly proud of Kevin and the Choices and Consequences partnership.
“Their stories are truly inspiring and a shining example of the dedication that exists amongst the staff and volunteers that work in the Criminal Justice System in Hertfordshire.”
Further information on the 2009 Justice Awards and the full list of winners and finalists can be found at www.cjsonline.gov.uk/justiceawards.
To find out more about the Hertfordshire Criminal Justice Board go to http://lcjb.cjsonline.gov.uk/Hertfordshire/home.html
By Amie Mulderrig
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The Singing Policeman: Tenor Daniel Rodriguez, formerly a New York City police officer, will perform in Great Mills
I LOVE his response to “do you miss it (being a police officer) at all?”
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After Sept. 11, 2001, Daniel Rodriguez, then a member of the New York City Police Department and one of its designated singers of the national anthem, became known as the “singing policeman” for his stirring renditions of both “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “God Bless America.”
In the aftermath of it all, Rodriguez received an invitation to study under Placido Domingo, who helped the “singing policeman” become confident enough to retire from police work and pursue his lifelong dream. Rodriguez has since become one of America’s most recognizable tenors. He has appeared onstage in symphony concerts and operas and as a solo artist, as he will on Oct. 24 at Great Mills High School.
Rodriguez’s national tour included 17 stops in September. He has 19 dates set for October, at performing arts centers, high schools and churches. While on tour in the Midwest, Rodriguez talked by phone about his solo concert repertoire and how his career has been shaped by what he witnessed on Sept. 11.
Q: Do you set the table with “God Bless America” or sing it as an encore?
A: Encore.
Q: But you sing all kinds of music. Can you tell me a little bit about your set list?
A: I’m on my fourth album now, so most of the songs come from those recordings. … I pick and choose depending upon the occasion and what people want to hear. I could be called a classical crossover singer because I was Broadway operetta starting out and then went to classical and then went back to Broadway operetta. … Most true opera singers do not have the ability, or it is very difficult for them, to do more of the poppy and lighter operatic stuff, whereas I can transfer between both.
Q: Will you change up your show for different parts of the country?
A: I try to get a feel for the audiences, but for most of the shows on this tour it’s an older crowd — 50-plus. The older crowd loves the real romantic era of music — the Jeanette MacDonald, the Mel Sanetti — as well as classical. And they always love when I throw in an aria or two.
Q: Your father and grandfather were singers. Did they pass along any good singing wisdom?
A: Not so much Grandfather, because I was a young man when he passed away. He passed down the voice. … But my father taught me that music is a celebration, and my father was always a happy man. … So my father taught me to enjoy music and to sing with passion.
Q: You had put your singing career on hold to do odd jobs and support your family, and you had been doing a variety of jobs during the five-year period before you became a police officer. Why did you decide to take the route you did?
A: First of all, it was one of the jobs that came up when I took the [state civil service exam] … I had been working in the post office; before that, I was doing jobs that had no benefits or real future. … I thought it would be an exciting job; it would be a real experience for someone like myself, who is now driving around to 117 cities in a conversion van. I am not one who shies away from new experiences … I really had to work hard. I had to, in six months, lose 50 pounds to become a police officer. That kind of determination showed me that it was something I really wanted to do.
Q: Do you miss it at all?
A: Every time I get cut off on the highway.
Q: What was your sense of patriotism before Sept. 11 and how did it change after witnessing what you did that day?
A: I think I always had a sense of patriotism. I had a sense of patriotism for my country. I think it’s a great country. But I also felt very enlightened …because I was given a broad spectrum of understanding of the world and people that taught me to accept all people as children of God. … But after 9/11, I think my life changed in that I saw firsthand that there is a very significant presence of evil in the world. … It’s very important that we do something about it: even in our personal lives, that we live a more positive life so that we can counter the negativity.
Q: You just spoke about music being a celebration. Did the way you sang “God Bless America” change?
A: I think it took on more meaning. When you sing a patriotic song before 9/11, particularly “God Bless America,” it was patriotic from the point of it being a beautiful song from our country. After 9/11, it was patriotic from the point of it being a prayer from a country in need of a prayer.
Q: Literally, would you pour more passion into the song?
A: Absolutely. Directly after 9/11 there was more passion poured into the song because there was more passion in me. I lived the horrors of 9/11. I wasn’t watching it on television. I was at Ground Zero when the towers came down. I lost friends at Ground Zero. I got to know their families as I sang at their funerals. (I sang at more than 100 funerals.) Absolutely there was more, because my whole persona was involved in it and I had to express that in the music. That was my outlet.
Q: Would you have made it this far if 9/11 had not happened?
A: I would hope that I would have continued to do what I was doing. If you look at my history before 9/11, I was singing every day and I was … trying to pursue a Broadway career. I was determined to get to a point where I was singing for a living and back to my first love. … Sept. 11 hurried things along, but it also changed it, too. I think if 9/11 had not happened I would have been just another singer. If I had achieved fame, I don’t think I would have appreciated my situation as much as I do now. My career is much more significant than it would have been. My career really stands for something much bigger than myself.
If you go
The Leonardtown Rotary Performing Arts Series will continue Oct. 24 with a concert featuring Daniel Rodriguez at Great Mills High School. Tickets are $25, $15 for children younger than 15. The high school is at 21130 Great Mills Road. Call 301-475-6999.
By DICKSON MERCER
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Interest High In State Police Trooper Jobs
AP
The Kentucky State Police has been swamped with calls from prospective cadets after taking their recruiting campaign to Facebook and Twitter.
Lt. David Jude said 400 people have applied to be tested for the job next month at the Department of Criminal Justice training center at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond.
Jude said he expects to top 800 applicants by the deadline on Nov. 6, based on interest that has been shown so far.
Applicants must be 21, be U.S. citizens in good health and have a valid driver’s license with no more than six driver demerit points. They also must have either two years of college, two years of active military service or two years as a full-time police officer for another agency.
Testing will be done the week of Nov. 16.
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Mexico’s Cops Seek Upgrade
When pressed about why Mexico is struggling in its battle with illegal-drug cartels, Genaro García Luna, the nation’s top police official, likes to put his inquisitors on the spot with a question: Would you encourage your child to become a Mexican cop?
The answer, he says, is often no.
The reputation of Mexican police is so poor that even Mr. García Luna, a stocky, frenetic man with close-cropped hair, would have given the same answer not long ago. As a young domestic intelligence officer at Mexico’s spy agency in the 1990s, he says, he would have been “offended” if anyone referred to him as a cop.
Now, it is his job to change all that. Mexican President Felipe Calderón tapped the 41-year-old to rebuild Mexico’s police from scratch amid a drug war that’s claimed at least 13,000 lives since Mr. Calderón took power nearly three years ago. The centerpiece of Mr. García Luna’s plan: persuading college-educated sons and daughters of the middle class to become part of a new, professional police corps.
“We’ve had a corrupt, uneducated police force, without a budget, driving stolen vehicles and basically decomposing for 40 years,” says Mr. García Luna, an engineer by training who was known in his younger days for tailing suspects on his motorcycle and personally leading raids on kidnapping rings. “I want to break historical inertias.”
Mexico’s future may depend on it. Unable to rely on the police, Mr. Calderón has deployed 45,000 soldiers to confront drug gangs by patrolling hot spots, giving cities such as Ciudad Juarez across the border from El Paso, Texas, the feel of war zones. But experts say military occupations are a short-term fix because traffickers ultimately scurry to set up shop somewhere else. Corralling drug gangs for the long term requires the kind of deep detective work that can uncover money transfers, drug shipments and bribe payments.
Mexico is seeking the capability to pull off the kind of operation announced Thursday by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder: the near-simultaneous, multi-U.S. city arrests of 300 members of the Mexican “La Familia” drug cartel, which has trafficked a flood of methamphetamine into the U.S. while terrorizing Mexico’s Michoacán state.
While this week’s arrests were a U.S. operation, La Familia is a also key front in Mr. García Luna’s drug war. Responding to the July arrest of a top La Familia boss in Michoacan, the group captured, tortured and killed a dozen of Mr. García Luna’s federal agents — some of whom were working with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration on investigations.
“This is not a one-country problem, and solving it will take more than a one-country solution,” Mr. Holder said Thursday. “La Familia’s attacks against Mexican law enforcement officials only make the valiant effort of our friends and partners across the border more heroic.”
Mr. García Luna has modeled his new Federal Police force after the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and other international agencies, with modern equipment, technology and enhanced investigative powers like wiretaps. His plan is to gradually replace the army on the drug war’s front lines with this two-and-a-half year-old force of around 40,000 cops. For now, the army is still in place, and the government won’t give a timeline for pulling the troops out.
The challenge is enormous. The average Mexican cop never made it past the eighth grade. Some can’t read or write. Many Mexicans’ only contact with a beat cop comes when they pay $5 bribes to get out of traffic stops. In some cities like Tijuana, well over half the local cops have recently failed lie-detector tests, according to one former city official familiar with the tests. In 2007, local cops in the Pacific resort town of Rosarito ambushed a new police chief drafted to help clean things up. He lived, but his bodyguard didn’t.
Mr. García Luna’s supporters, including senior officials in the Calderón government and a group of businessmen he helped when members of their families were kidnapped over the years, see him as a Mexican Eliot Ness, the 1930s-era Chicago crime fighter. They say he is risking his life — four of his top aides have already been gunned down — to keep the nation from disintegrating into a narco-state. They point out that so far his Federal Police have seized nearly 30 tons of cocaine and arrested more than 300 prominent traffickers.
Critics, including some opposition lawmakers, deride him as a wannabe J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI’s first director, and say his efforts are plagued by incompetence and ethical lapses. Like Mr. Hoover, they say, he has used strong-arm tactics against critics, trumping up legal charges against them to compel their silence. In his zeal for boosting the image of the Federal Police, he admitted to staging a kidnap rescue for the benefit of television cameras. During a raucous, eight-hour appearance before congress in September, opposition lawmakers blasted him for failing to keep Mexico’s murder rate from soaring this year.
A rash of scandals among those close to him hasn’t helped Mr. García Luna build credibility. Though he has never been charged with a criminal act or implicated in a corruption scandal, some of his senior aides have. Last year, his top antidrug commander was arrested and charged with helping a cartel. He is in jail awaiting trial. Another officer in Mr. García Luna’s anti-kidnap squad was arrested for allegedly organizing phony police checkpoints to abduct victims on behalf of a kidnapping gang. She is being held for possible trial by Mexico City authorities.
“García Luna should resign because at this point his credibility has been so damaged that it is threatening his whole project,” says Alberto Islas, who runs a Mexico City-based consulting firm that has worked on drug-war issues for the Calderon government. “The debate has become about him, rather than the police institution he wants to build.”
Mr. García Luna says he is clean, and he says the fact that his aides were arrested shows that corruption is no longer tolerated. He says all arrests he has made have been on legitimate warrants. He compares the state of Mexican police to that of 1970s New York, which inspired movies like “Serpico,” where Al Pacino plays a lone clean cop in sea of corruption. His voice fills with vehemence when his record is challenged. “There is an end to this film,” he says. “We’re going to do this, you’ll see. Remember me.”
The Bribe or the Bullet
Much of the skepticism about whether Mr. García Luna can succeed is rooted in the history of Mexican law enforcement. The government has announced plans to reform its police so many times over the decades that it is hard for some to take new attempts seriously.
Popular wisdom holds that eventually, law-enforcement officials in Mexico must choose between plata, the money of a bribe, or plomo, the lead of an assassin’s bullet. In 1997, Mexico’s antidrug czar, Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, was caught on a drug-gang payroll, and is now behind bars.
“What Gutiérrez Rebollo taught us is that you just never know,” says a senior Calderón administration official who supports Mr. García Luna. “But at the end of the day, you have to trust the guys you’ve got, or else you have nothing.”
Mr. García Luna’s reliability is a concern for U.S. security officials as the two nations draw closer in the drug fight. The U.S. has begun transferring $400 million in drug aid for Mexico, by far the biggest commitment since the Gutiérrez Rebollo case shattered U.S. confidence. Around half of this money will flow to Mr. García Luna, mainly in the form of Black Hawk helicopters and other equipment.
To give the new federal force a fighting chance, Mr. García Luna has provided officers with souped-up patrol cars, body armor, AR-15 assault rifles and an array of technology including surveillance balloons that hover above cities. He guards these assets jealously, and senior Federal Police officers say he gets particularly upset when an officer crashes one of the fleet of Dodge Charger squad cars he acquired.
For the first time, Mexico is putting together a national database of vehicle registrations, arrest warrants, jail inmates and other data, a crucial tool for nabbing fugitives.
Of course, all the fancy technology in the world can’t take down drug gangs if the police themselves remain corrupt and inefficient. That is where Mr. García Luna’s plan to recruit middle-class college graduates comes in. Many in this demographic have a hard time finding good jobs in a sluggish economy where the highest paying positions still tend to go to the elites. And though Mexican law enforcement has always favored brawn over brains, recruiting primarily from the lower classes, Mr. García Luna says the world’s best police agencies actually have it the other way around: “When I first visited the FBI, I realized most everyone there had master’s degrees. Why can’t we do that?”
The experiment began in earnest in June as Mr. García Luna began recruiting thousands of college grads from top universities to form a new division of investigative agents at the Federal Police. Around 1,300 have since graduated from two months of course work at a new police academy in the town of San Luis Potosi and are now receiving three months of field training. Mr. García Luna says he plans to hire around 10,000 new investigators.
The rest of the officers will be required to have high-school diplomas — a standard that previous national forces haven’t imposed — and will go through similar field training.
A Clear Career Path
It is the investigative unit in particular that Mr. García Luna hopes will spearhead a fundamental change in the way Mexican police operate. Until now, police have built cases mainly around confessions of witnesses, a situation ripe for accusations of coercion. Instead, these new officers will build cases based on collecting evidence, such as phone records.
To attract them, the base pay of a federal police agent has been raised by more than 30% to around 16,000 pesos per month, or about $1,200, more than many white-collar jobs pay. All recruits get access to cut-rate mortgages, health care and a retirement plan.
That was enough to convince Juan Pablo Viay, a 35-year-old father of two who was recently laid off from his job at Chrysler’s Mexico City corporate headquarters. Now he is training at the police academy and hopes to apply his white-collar skills, like analyzing spreadsheets, to crime fighting. With his wife and parents worried for his safety, he is pinning his hopes on an analyst job that would keep him largely out of the line of fire.
The increased pay alone won’t be enough to stem the tide of corruption, says Mr. García Luna, since a drug gang can always offer more money. That’s why new recruits are tested to gauge their susceptibility to bribes, including a lie-detector test and a follow-up a visit to the recruit’s home. More broadly, by offering an upward career path, cops have an incentive to stay on the straight and narrow, says Mr. García Luna.
For Elizabeth Mendoza, a 29-year-old Federal Police recruit, the decision to sign up was a mix of economic need and a desire to do something to help her country. She quit her job as an administrator at a truck manufacturer after seeing a TV advertisement for the Federal Police that promised merit-driven promotions.
These days, Ms. Mendoza, a married mother of one, gets up before dawn for a 6 a.m. assembly of recruits in a large courtyard at the Police Academy. Standing at attention as the sun rises, she and other recruits sing the national anthem and a new Federal Police hymn — commissioned by Mr. García Luna in a bid, he says, to build esprit de corps.
Along with hundreds of other aspiring cadets clad in a uniform of jeans and white shirts, Ms. Mendoza attends classes on conducting investigations, collecting evidence and giving testimony, as well as shooting weapons and cuffing suspects. She is surrounded by recruits with a similar economic and social background. Eighty percent have never held a weapon before.
More than half of Ms. Mendoza’s instructors hail from the U.S., Spain, Colombia and other nations where agents often have university-level educations. The presence of overseas instructors sends a powerful message for young Mexican recruits who lack homegrown models of professional police, says Academy Director Severino Cartagena.
On a recent Thursday along a main highway in Ciudad Juárez, José Menera, a 34-year-old chemical engineer turned Federal Police officer, nabbed a man driving a load of marijuana in a hidden compartment in his gas tank. The young officer did it from the air-conditioned cab of a high-tech roadside scanning machine purchased under Mr. García Luna’s overhaul.
Catching the ‘Ear Cutter’
Mr. García Luna took an unlikely path into police work. Raised in a working-class enclave of Mexico City, he was a 19-year-old mechanical engineering student when he took a job with a new Mexican spy agency, the CISEN. He rose fast, and was sent for training exercises with the FBI and at police agencies in Spain and elsewhere.
Among his first assignments was tracking an urban guerrilla group that specialized in kidnapping. His defining moment came in 1998, when he assembled a covert squad that captured Daniel Arizmendi, a former cop turned leader of a violent kidnapping ring. Mr. Arizmendi had become a national terror, popularly called the “Ear Cutter” for his practice of slicing off victims’ ears and sending them to families to pressure them to pay ransom.
In 2001, newly elected President Vicente Fox tapped him to head up the Federal Judicial Police. Arriving at the Judicial Police headquarters in a rough Mexico City barrio, he found crumbling offices reeking of sewage. The few beat-up computers on desks were not connected by a network. Bullet proof glass separated the chief’s office from the police themselves. Some officers drove stolen cars and employed freelance thugs called “madrinas” to enforce their will on the streets.
Mr. García Luna tried to modernize the force, culling nearly half of the 6,000 officers after they flunked lie-detector tests or other aptitude measures. But his plans to form a new force, the Federal Investigative Agency, fell apart after many of the fired police went to court and won reinstatement. Soon AFI agents were being implicated in crimes.
He got another chance. In 2006, Mr. Calderón named him to the cabinet level post of Public Security Secretary. Starting from scratch, Mr. García Luna took the best men from the AFI and made them the core of the new Federal Police.
Even if Mr. García Luna proves he is clean, his biggest obstacle may be time. Mexican politicians are not big on institutional continuity, meaning the Federal Police could be dismantled and Mr. García Luna pushed out the door after elections in 2012.
By JOHN LYONS
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Welcome home, Rocky!
I’ve been without a computer for the last few days, so let’s catch up on all the ‘good’ news…
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Rocky has come home.
The Windcrest Police Department said the two-year-old Belgian Malinois known as ‘Rocky’, who had been missing since Tuesday afternoon, was returned to his handler, Officer Adam Lee, Thursday morning.
But Rocky’s adventures were actually short-lived. Apparently, soon after he got out of his fenced yard in the Valley-Hi area, Rocky was spotted by a dog handler from Lackland Air Force Base. LAFB also trains these dogs, and the handler thought Rocky was one of theirs.
He picked up Rocky, and then did a quick inventory of their dogs.
Realizing none of LAFB’s dogs were missing, the handler started checking the news for a report on a missing dog. He saw Rocky’s plight mentioned on television Thursday morning and contacted the Windcrest Police Department.
As a dual purpose police dog, Rocky spends his days working as a skilled police dog. But by night he is the much-loved Lee family pet. The Windcrest Police are working on Rocky’s home enclosure to prevent any future escapes.
Rocky has been with the Windcrest Police Department since 2008.
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Sheriff in ‘Balloon Boy’ Incident Shows Humor, Resolve in Blog
Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden shoots from the hip when recounting last week’s “Balloon Boy” incident– and subsequent backlash — in his new blog, showing his sense of resolve – and humor – amid the media frenzy surrounding the story.
In his “The Bull’s Eye – Straight Shooting from the Sheriff” blog, this week titled “Up, Up and Away,” he delivers some “insight into public response to this incident and what we have had to deal with behind the scenes” after six-year-old Falcon Heene, believed to be trapped in a rogue, experimental flying saucer-shaped balloon, turned up in the family’s garage attic.
Alderden says his office has received over 500 e-mails and a like number of phone calls from all over the world, from Germany to Fiji. Many contained suggestions on how to perform a rescue, including, “Harrier aircraft, hot air balloons with nets, sky divers, blimps, ultra-lights, para-gliders, and fishing hooks with fishing line.”
“Some suggestions were actually pretty sound,” he says, “Others – not so sound.”
He adds that many e-mails and phone calls were “calling for me to be removed from office immediately and impugning our investigative ability,” but, “Following our most recent press conference, that tide has turned.”
Still, when the police department first stood by the Heenes’ story, the Colorado sheriff says he had to contend with complaints calling him everything from an “idiot,” “gullible” and “Barney Fife” to a “big-mouthed, fat, bald-headed, over-inflated ego of a sheriff.”
“Ouch!” he writes. “I disagree with most of the above, but have to concede the fat and bald part.”
“Just for the record and all appearances to the contrary, I really don’t enjoy being in the media spot-light,” he continues. “In fact, I’m pretty ticked off that I had to spend my weekend dealing with them instead of some quality time in the saddle. That said, sometimes the Sheriff just has to be the spokesperson instead of putting it off on the Press Information Officer. I did my best to put an end to the media circus and have refused to do any more interviews or morning TV shows, even turning down Dr. Phil.”
Alderden also addresses his so-called controversial American Flag shirt, his shortness of breath during his press conference, and that he “particularly liked the caller who had proof that Hillary Clinton was a space alien. At least that caller had some credibility.”
On a serious note, he said, “Child Protection is in fact conducting an investigation to ensure the [Heene] children’s safety. That doesn’t mean they will be taken away and it doesn’t mean they won’t, but given everything we know, we do need to take a close look at this.”
Watch “The Insider” for more news on the ongoing “Balloon Boy” saga…
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Orange County K9 officer, Hunter, being denied retirement, despite worsening heart condition
There is a interesting, complicated and rather heart-breaking story out of Orange County, NY that is raging over a 7 yr old K-9 officer by the name of Hunter. Hunter’s current handler, Ed Josefovitz, is leaving the department and has requested that Hunter be retired in light of his age (most K9 officers retire between 8-9 yrs of age) and due to a diagnosed progressive heart condition. In April, 2009, a veterinarian diagnosed Hunter’s heart condition and he was approved for day-to-day service, which typically included hanging out in court, or other sedentary duties. Hunter rarely (as of late) saw any action that would require him to exert himself.
Proponents of the sheriff’s office argue that Hunter is owned by the department, rather than the officer and that he must continue to work until he has reached full retirement age, despite his heart condition. For Capt. Barry’s personal stance on the issue, please visit this link.
Advocates for Hunter insist that going through the rigorous 8 months of retraining at the academy, in addition to the emotional toll of being removed from his current family and placed with a new handler, will only aggravate his worsening heart condition. Concern for his welfare is tremendous and there are many who believe that the dog could be killed by the stress that will be placed upon him in the coming months.
Hunter’s current handler, Josefovitz, has offered to pay the department $6,900 to cover the cost of a new K-9 officer, but the sheriff’s office has refused. Apparently, many believe that the department is denying Hunter’s retirement out of malice and that the welfare of the dog is being completely over-looked. Some type of ulterior motive does seem to be at play since a prior, healthy K-9 was allowed to retire at only 3 yrs of age when his handler was fired from the department.
Supporters of K-9 Officer Hunter are asked to join the Facebook group Stop NY OC Sheriff’s Office from Killing Hunter. Additionally, supporters are being encouraged to email the NY OC Sheriff’s office at this link or send an email to the mayor at this link. The family is hoping to not only spread the word of Hunter’s plight (if you are concerned, please forward this to friends and family and post on your social networking sites), but also, to get the word to the sheriff’s office and the mayor, that there is support for Hunter. There is amazing power in numbers and obviously, the stretch and power of the internet is incredible.
By Penny Eims
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Good boy, Axel, job well done
Axel, an Allentown police dog, died Thursday. He was 8 years old.
City police Sgt. John Hill was teamed up with Axel when the black German shepherd was 18 months old. They trained at the Waopokeneta, Ohio, K-9 school and had patrolled Allentown’s streets ever since.
Axel was one of four dogs in the city Police Department. He was used for regular patrols and for drug detection. Cancer cut his life short, according to city Assistant Chief Ron Manescu.
In 2006, Axel caught one of two suspects fleeing police after a Tioga Street shooting, Manescu said. The man had run into the woods at Brick and Furnace streets.
In 2003, the dog aided an arrest in an arson at Temple Beth El, the synagogue that used to be at 17th and Hamilton streets.
”We had an indication that it had just happened, and Axel led us right to a house, where we found the suspect.”
Manescu, a former K-9 officer, said losing a dog is hard on the officer.
”You really form a strong bond with the animal,” he said. ”It’s tough to take when a dog dies prematurely.”
By Frank Warner OF THE MORNING CALL
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RELATED STORY
St. Paul, vet school partner on K-9 health
The St. Paul Police Department and the University of Minnesota’s College of Veterinary Medicine have partnered to provide K-9 units with health care services in a new three-year contract.
Currently, there are 19 dogs serving as K-9 officers in the department.
Under the contract, it costs the police department $930 each time a K-9 is treated at the University, with a 5 percent increase each year.
Before the partnership, the St. Paul Police Department paid a set fee for each visit to local clinics where the dogs sought treatment.
“Many times we would end up at the University’s clinic because it provides more services for the animals,” said St. Paul police Sgt. Paul Dunnom. “We jumped at an opportunity to assist the K-9s where research and care are the most advanced.”
Health care, including vaccination, heartworm preventatives and annual exams are covered under the contract for each pre-certified K-9.
Kellie Strand, a technician at the University’s veterinary clinic, has worked with each of the St. Paul Police Department’s K-9 officers.
She said because each dog’s records are on file and because the clinic provides 24-hour service, the clinic can respond to any injury or illness.
“The department and its dogs benefit from the partnership in the most extreme cases, as well as routine checkups,” Strand said.
In April, a St. Paul K-9 was shot in the face and suffered a tooth fracture because of his injury. Strand said the clinic responded quickly and that the K-9 recovered.
Dunnom said the University’s veterinary services have responded with immediate medical attention for the department’s K-9s in ways other clinics aren’t able to.
“The University’s veterinary services have an expertise that many clinics can’t compete with,” he said. “It’s a no-brainer … the school continues to teach the vets we were going to before the partnership started.”
Hospital director David Lee said the University’s facilities are the largest and busiest in the country.
“Most people don’t realize that,” he said. “We have almost all the technology a human hospital would.”
The clinic is equipped with an MRI scanner and other specialized machines that ensure advanced care for its patients. There are more than 65 specialists working at the clinic and 13 specialties within it.
“The medical center provides a level of care that departments within St. Paul law enforcement require to ensure [public safety],” Lee said.
Four dogs will be treated at the clinic before the end of the month, Dummon said.
K-9 units are an extension of law enforcement and should be provided with the care and love needed to assist them back to health, Strand said.
“These dogs provide security to Minnesota,” she said. “We need to provide them with protection when they are injured or sick.”
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