Deputy has nose for bloodhounds and getting the most out of them

When deputy Jon Richey joined the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office after spending nearly two decades with the Salt Lake Police Department, there was one change the dog handling expert started pushing for immediately: get a bloodhound on the department's K9 squad.

"I was armed to the teeth with my proposal," Richey said.

It didn't take long for him to convince his bosses that for tracking a fleeing suspect or a missing child, a bloodhound was the best way to go.

Today, with his big nose and seemingly even bigger ears, Oliver, the department's first and so far only bloodhound, is called upon by the sheriff's office in almost any situation that requires a search.

Most police K9s aren't certified to begin work in the field until they are 18 months old. "Ollie" is just 1-year-old and already has seven successful "captures" on his record.

But the foundation for Oliver even getting his paw in the door was actually set years earlier by one of the greatest crime fighters in the state's history — JJ. He was the Salt Lake Police Department's famous bloodhound with a foghorn-like bey who alerted people for several city blocks when he was close to finding a missing or wanted person. JJ ended his career with 271 captures or successful tracks before succumbing to cancer in 2008.

JJ's legacy was so impressive that Richey not only looked for a bloodhound to train, he traced JJ's bloodline back to Missouri and found one of JJ's direct relatives.

"He was all the influence in the world (to start a bloodhound program at the sheriff's office)," Richey said of JJ.

While he was sergeant over the city's K9 squad, Richey said he crunched the numbers and looked at JJ's statistics vs. the rest of the K9 unit, which was comprised mainly of German shepherds.

"He consistently outproduced the patrol dogs," Richey said.

JJ was so successful, Salt Lake police eventually brought several more bloodhounds to its squad.

Because 95 percent of what police K9s do is "nose work," Richey said it only made sense to introduce a bloodhound into the sheriff's office.

The breakthrough came, once again, due to a case JJ worked one night. In this case, seeing was believing.