BROOKINGS – The Brookings Police Department’s new officer is going to make a big impact with her nose.
Gina is the new K-9 officer and drug dog. The Belgian Malinois is 3 years old and will ride with Officer Seth Bonnema.
“Every shift that I work, she’s working,” he said.
Gina will be utilized in drug searches in various locations, including schools and traffic stops. Bonnema will also do demonstrations with her to explain about the K-9 program, Gina’s training and how she does her job.
Getting together
Bonnema has been with the BPD for a little more than two years and served with the Flandreau Police Department for about five years. He has about five years experience as a K-9 handler.
Gina was born in the Netherlands, where puppies are screened for their abilities to be police dogs, which includes their willingness to follow orders, their hunt drive, search drive and work drive.
“Not every dog makes the cut,” Bonnema said.
Gina was then sent to the Kasseburg Canine Training Center in Alabama, where she was given more testing and training to see if she’d make a good drug detection dog, apprehension dog or both.
“She’s just strictly narcotics detection,” Bonnema said.
With his experience as a K-9 handler, Bonnema was itching to get another dog and had been lobbying hard for the BPD to obtain their own dog, which they have never had. When a situation came up that called for a drug dog – which was happening more frequently – BPD would call in a dog from various agencies such as state troopers, Flandreau Police, Brookings County Sheriff’s Office, or even Lake County.
With Brookings having a growing population, having a large school district and a state university, plus being close to Interstate 90 and right on Interstate 29, which are both drug corridors, Police Chief Jeff Miller decided the time was right last fall to get a dog. Other South Dakota law enforcement agencies were going to Kasseburg for dogs, and there was funding available from the state drug seizure fund.
Any time cash is seized in drug activity, the money is forfeited and goes into the state drug control fund, Bonnema said.
“That money can be used for any materials for drug enforcement” including a dog and everything she will need to do her job, like a specially outfitted vehicle with a kennel in the back, Bonnema said.
“Everything happened pretty fast,” Miller said. “I applied with the state and got the lion’s share of funding for the project. Once that was approved I went ahead and held openings for the position within the department for a handler. Several applied, but Officer Seth Bonnema was the obvious choice as he had been a drug dog handler before coming to us from the Flandreau PD. It took a lot of work and effort to pull it together in such a short time, but it’s been worth the effort.”
With Bonnema on board, a dog needed to be chosen for him.
“A lot of it is you have to be matched for each other,” he said. A Malinois is “full of energy and fast-paced. We get along great as a team. She’s fast and I’m fast.”
Training
Gina arrived Dec. 23, and the duo started training camp Jan. 3 in Pierre.
Training starts with a “game” of fetch, Bonnema said.
“A dog smells things separately. If we smell a pepperoni pizza, we just smell a pepperoni pizza. They smell the sauce, the pepperoni, the bread, the butter that they put on the crust. They smell all of those odors separately,” he said.
To train the dog, four types of drugs – heroin, cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine – are hidden in a rubber hose and separated by wax paper, and the ends are duct taped shut.
“So when you’re just doing throws with them, they’re taking in all that odor,” Bonnema said.
The next day, the hose, wax paper and duct tape are switched out for PVC pipe, aluminum foil and packing tape, but the drugs are the same.
“So every day, everything is changing but the drug odor. That’s how they start to familiarize (with the drugs),” Bonnema said.
In the following weeks, the drugs are hidden to see if the dogs will recognize the odors, no matter where they are. If the dog indicates they’ve smelled the drugs, they get rewarded with a toy or play time.
“When they sit, they get their reward, which is their toy. ... It’s their paycheck,” Bonnema said.
Humans and dogs go through the training as a team and get certified as a team, Bonnema said.
Three judges assess the dog’s abilities to find 14 different drug odors in different situations, such as a vehicle’s exterior and interior, barn stalls, three rooms of a residence, a stockroom and a storage unit.
“The dog is graded on its searching, its indication, and I’m graded on my handler skill,” Bonnema said.
Together they get a grade between 1 and 6; the lower the score, the better.
“Once you do that ... you’re certified to work the street as a team. You have to re-certify every year and as a team. If I was to get a new dog or Gina was to get a new handler, they would have to go through the seven-week camp all over again,” Bonnema said.
In addition to the annual certification, the dogs and handlers undergo constant training.
“That’s just to keep the dog sharp. You get to know your dog better and their alert behavior when they’re in drug odor. If you don’t use it, you lose it; it’s a perishable skill,” Bonnema said.
Friendly, fast worker
Gina has a high drive to work, but she’s friendly, too.
“She’s a lover. She’s trained to be sociable. If I had her out right now, she’d just jump on you, wanting you to pet her,” Bonnema said, but added she’s got a strong guard drive, too, “so her kennel becomes her space. A lot of the K-9 dogs, you get close to the vehicle, they’ll start barking at you. She’ll probably start barking before you even see her.”
Gina’s biggest asset is her nose, which works “very well,” according to Bonnema.
“Their nose is incredible,” Bonnema said. “A dog’s nose possesses up to 300 million olfactory sensors, compared to about 6 million in us. That’s a big difference.
“She can search and clear an area faster than 20 men and women can with their hands,” he said.
“If a pound of marijuana was hidden in this room for a certain amount of time, when she breaks that doorway, she can already smell it. It’s her job to pinpoint where the strongest source is coming from,” Bonnema said.
Drug runners can get very creative when trying to conceal their wares, with cologne, air fresheners and food condiments. He’s heard of dealers who bury the drugs in dog food, but it doesn’t fool the dogs. Neither does Saran Wrap, axle grease, mustard, ketchup, pepper, or meat.
“The dog just smells the mustard, pepper, meat, axle grease and also the drug odor,” he said.
“I had one stop where the marijuana was vacuum-sealed, layered in dryer sheets, and vacuum-sealed again,” Bonnema said.
“As humans, we’re never gonna be able to smell that, but a dog can. Every package has pores, so depending on how long it’s been sitting in that car, it’s eventually gonna come out of that package,” he said. “Almost all of the time, they’re gonna smell everything.”
Giving an edge
Law enforcement needs that edge in the war on drugs.
“There’s a lot of drugs on I-29. People are going to be stopping in our town with drugs in their vehicles,” Bonnema said. “If I believe that criminal activity is afoot, I can legally detain you while I run my dog.
“If I think someone’s high or they’re showing indicators of being high, I’ll just run a field sobriety test. Based on that, if they’re arrested for DUI ... we have to inventory the vehicle. If we go in the vehicle and we smell marijuana, we just have probable cause to search the entire vehicle,” he said.
“People think, ‘Oh, it’s Brookings, it’s not gonna happen here.’ Well, it’s here, and the cartel was in Volga. The cartels, they actually pick out towns where they think there’s not a lot of enforcement,” Bonnema said.
“We have a town that has a state college and all these drugs are coming into town; and the schools, they have drugs in them. ... People like teachers, parents are just gonna have sense of security that there’s a dog nearby, if they need it, in the schools and get that stuff out of there. Because it’s there.”
Gina’s already made an impact, according to Miller.
“Officer ‘Gina’ and her handler Officer Seth Bonnema have already had four call outs that have been successful. It’s already been a great asset to the department and promises to be just that for the future,” he said.
Bonnema is relishing his role.
“Everyone’s real excited. People have been wanting a dog for a long time in this department. I’m just glad I was selected to be the K-9 handler,” Bonnema said.
Contact Jodelle Greiner at jgreiner@brookingsregister.com.
