Benny Westcott
It didn’t take long for Sweet Home Police Department’s new K9 officer to make an impact.
The department, which has been without a dog for nearly a year, had literally just gotten its K9 division back in action when, on the night of July 8, SHPD Officer Brian Prather heard over the radio a request from Linn County Sheriff personnel for a canine to help chase down an assault suspect near Riverbend Campground east of Sweet Home.
So the handler and his new dog Murphy, a 2-year-old German shepherd, went in pursuit.
Murphy was able to cross the South Santiam River near the campground, despite having never been in water before, as well as climb up an 120-degree incline embankment.
Using his acute sense of smell to follow the scent of the runaway, Murphy eventually located the man hiding on the other side of a fence in blackberry bushes, covering himself with his backpack, and informed Prather of his whereabouts by barking.
Prather, in turn, informed nearby Linn County deputies, who ended up pulling the suspect, Devin Ward, 26, over the fence and arresting him.
Ward was arrested on charges of physical contact harassment/simple assault, second-degree disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, second-degree criminal trespass, third-degree escape, reckless driving and a probation violation.
Prather thinks Murphy was crucial in the cops getting their guy in a timely manner.
“I don’t know how they would have done things without a dog, but with the dog it definitely sped things up,” he said. “It’s definitely possible they could have found him because of where he was, but the dog just expedited that by a huge amount because he just led me straight to him.”
He was impressed with the dog’s effort under the circumstances.
“It was pretty incredible, because there were a lot of competing odors there like vegetation, but he was still able to differentiate which odor we were looking for and find the guy for me,” Prather said.
SHPD got Murphy, originally from Germany, from Tarheel Canine in North Carolina. The duo of Prather and Murphy trained for six weeks under a program arranged by the Bend Police Department to get ready for actual deployment.
After narcotic detection dog Gemma was retired last August by the department, Murphy brings a different skill set.
“With the change in the drug laws, it makes it much more difficult to use a narcotics detection dog,” SHPD Chief Jason Ogden said. “So we thought it would be much more beneficial to the community to have a patrol dog.”
He said that most agencies are going away from narcotic detection dogs because of how difficult it is to do narcotics investigations.
“Most user amounts of illegal drugs are not crimes – they’re violations,” he explained. “So it makes it extremely difficult to do drug investigations. Are you going to write search warrants for a dog that hits on a vehicle that has a violation amount of drugs? It just becomes way more complicated.”
He noted that Murphy can affect situations with his mere presence. “Oftentimes, when you bring a dog out to a situation where somebody isn’t cooperating with law enforcement, just the mere fact that the dog is there can encourage somebody to cooperate so we don’t even have to use the dog,” the chief said.
The entire $14,000 cost of the dog was funded by donations from the community.
Prather said Murphy is a lot bigger and stronger than the older Gemma, with a lot more energy and drive.
“When Gemma was younger, she was always wanting to work and stuff, but towards the end of her career she was losing some of that drive,” Prather said.
“Murphy has just 1,000 times more drive than Gemma. He’s always ready to work. Whenever I get him out of the car he’s looking for something to do, whether that’s tracking or looking for evidence or whatever it is.”
Prather added that “He’s actually really friendly until we get into work mode. And then he’s not so friendly.”