Gemma and Sweet Home Police Officer Sasha McDonald have located and seized more than 20 ounces of narcotics from the streets since they went to work earlier this year.
Since April 18, McDonald has deployed Gemma, Sweet Home Police Department’s new drug detection dog, 35 times.
She has helped seize $6,835 in cash associated with narcotics, McDonald said.
“She’s doing really good,” McDonald said. “She gets a little more excited after every deployment.”
Gemma has a field reliability rating of 91.87 percent, McDonald said. That means that when she alerts, she finds drugs that frequently.
McDonald is deploying Gemma once or twice a week at this point, she said. “Within the last two weeks, I’ve deployed her five times. One night, I deployed her three times.”
They range from walks through the Circle K parking lot during the night to assists in Lebanon and in the county.
That included a stop on Knox Butte Road outside Albany, McDonald said. “She alerted to everything on the car.”
She located 2 ounces of methamphetamines, McDonald said.
Lebanon will be able to start returning the favor.
Lebanon Police Department’s drug detection dog went to work there last week and will be able to respond to Sweet Home when needed, McDonald said.
The response of those whose vehicles are sniffed by the dog have been varied.
“I’ve had people cry as I walk her around (the car),” McDonald said. Others tell her to go ahead and that they don’t have any drugs. Most often in that case, Gemma doesn’t alert on the vehicle.
McDonald said she has had a couple of situations in which Gemma has alerted on a car, but she was unable to locate any drugs. In those cases, she said, the scent may have been on cash or the subject.
McDonald also deploys Gemma at storage units, she said. Last week, she alerted on a unit in which officers, after obtaining a warrant, located a baggie with heroin residue.
“We’ve had a really good response from the community,” McDonald said. The Police Department raised $3,700 from the Cascade K9 Jamboree held in September and a lunch fund-raiser at Thriftway this month. The program also received a $5,000 grant from Aftermath, a crime scene cleanup firm.
“We’ve gotten so much support,” McDonald said. “It means a lot that people believe in it as much as I do.”
Numerous businesses and individuals have donated to an auction, McDonald said. Thriftway donated food for fund-raising events, and Hoy’s has donated dog food and toys.
The funds pay for training and will help pay for a replacement vehicle.
Deschutes County donated McDonald and Gemma’s current patrol vehicle, McDonald said. It has 110,000 miles on it. She would like to get another 50,000, but the vehicle will need to be replaced.
Training conferences cost about $500 each, McDonald said, and they plan to attend two annually.
It’s a chance for all K9 units to get together with trainers, McDonald said. She doesn’t have access to pounds of drugs for training purposes except at conferences like this.
“It makes us better,” McDonald said. “It makes our dogs better. Trainers give us critiques.”
McDonald said she would like to attend a couple of other conferences out of state, including one in California and another that moves to different states each year.
While discussing it, Jordan Crow, a representative of Bulletproof-It, Inc., committed to paying for one of those trips. He had just fitted Gemma with a new donated bulletproof vest.
The company will raise the money by committing $5 to $10 per sale during a Veterans Day special.
“We like to support local communities,” Crow said. Small-town K9 programs rely on donations, and when Bulletproof-It donates body armor, the departments can use those donations for something else.
The company, based in Vancouver, Wash., provides a variety of armor solutions to the military, law enforcement and first responders.