K-9 officers: Police in Orem add a 4th dog to squad

OREM — Man's best friend has taken $250,000 of narcotics off the streets of Orem in the past seven years.

And the city's K-9 squad now has new reinforcements, with the recent addition of a fourth Belgian Malinois, 3-year-old Vedor. Officers showed off their dogs' drug-finding and suspect-catching skills Wednesday.

Rudy, at 7 years old the longest-serving dog, used his keen sense of smell — 800 times greater than a human's — to lead him to the trunk of a car holding a suitcase full of drugs. He then scratched the license plate to indicate where the stash was.

The dogs go through eight weeks of basic training on obedience and tracking, then another eight weeks of "drug school" where they learn to sniff out marijuana, methamphetamine, heroin and cocaine.

They then live with their handlers and are used daily by narcotics detectives.

"We spend more time with them than any member of our family," said Cpl. Art Lopez, who oversees the squad. "If anything happened to them, we'd be devastated."

The $9,600 tab for Vedor was covered by a federal grant. Like the rest of the dogs, he was imported from Holland and selected from a vendor in California.

Lopez said Orem police prefer Belgian Malinois over German or Dutch shepherds because they tend to be more social. They are typically retired when they are between 8 and 10 years old.

According to Lopez, his dogs have found drugs in every hiding place imaginable: behind secret doors, in engine compartments, even in a baby's diaper. Drug dealers try to hide the scent with anything from mustard to axle grease — all to no avail.

And when a suspect is on the run, the threat of a dog's bite at 650 pounds of pressure per square inch is often more intimidating than any weapon police carry.

"They'd rather fight with officers than with a police dog," Lopez said, as Rudy easily bowled over a reporter wearing a protective suit and dragged her along the ground.

"A lot of drug dealers are in prison right now because of these dogs."

e-mail: pkoepp@desnews.com