Priceville council green lights drug, search dog
Mar. 29—PRICEVILLE — A pooch from Poland may become Priceville's next police officer — a drug-sniffing and human-trailing dog.
Priceville City Council members agreed this week to spend $15,500 to bring aboard a Belgian Malinois drug dog following a proposal from Priceville police Officer Lucas Ferrell.
"Prevention is the biggest reason we want to do it," Mayor Sam Heflin said Wednesday. "We don't have a big problem with drugs; we don't want it to become a problem. We want to head it off before it becomes one."
A message printed on the back of the department's police cruisers sums it up, he said. The message reads: "Not in Priceville."
Heflin said there have been several arrests involving people either coming off the interstate and getting fuel or coming off the interstate and staying in a hotel who were transporting drugs. The desire to prevent crime and the addition of Ferrell to the police force brought the issue to the forefront because the officer has expressed a desire to have a drug dog, the mayor said.
During the pre-meeting work session Monday, Ferrell told council members, "I know that in prior times a canine unit has been proposed to you. On multiple fronts, we're at a point in time where — as a department, as a city — I think that it's paramount that we have one.
"Just from my personal experience in the fight against drugs that I've had since I've been here — a year and a half — it's getting worse, and it's not necessarily that Priceville is going downhill, it's just the amount of people we have coming through Priceville.
He added that the high school is growing.
"There's become more and more I'm not going to say issues at the school but I'm gonna say as you get bigger, issues come with it," Ferrell said.
The department is now at a point where staffing and vehicles will allow them to start moving forward with a drug and trailing dog, he said.
"I've vetted a kennel for the last year. They import dogs from overseas, and they have expedited the training program from the traditional 12 to 16 weeks down to two weeks," he said. "The way they do that is they train and certify the dog. They bring me in for a two-week program and train me to the dog. That has held up to a Supreme Court standard."
Yearly maintenance on the dog includes a $140 recertification program. There is no additional insurance cost, he said.
The dog and the handler school costs $12,000 plus $3,000 to $3,500 for all the other equipment needed to start the program.
The process to put a kennel in a new Dodge Durango police vehicle already scheduled to come into service is $1,500 more than the prisoner compartment is already expected to cost, Ferrell said.
He is also researching a possible grant that is available, one that could cut about $7,000 from the cost.
The next 80-hour handler school is about four months away.
During the regular meeting that followed Monday's work session, council members Charles Black, Patrick Dean, Ashley England and Tommy Perry and the mayor voted to pay $15,500 for the dog and the training. Councilman Melvin Duran III was absent.
