Good Dog, Creck

Lars axed me to put up my police ride story, so here it is. I'm not counting this as published. I'm going to hold firm to the idea of traditional journalism in the form of newspapers, print and the dinosaurs that deliver them to your front door. Blogs. Don't. Count.

It was a slow Saturday night on the swing shift. Officer Creck only left the patrol car twice, once just to chase his rope ball.

Creck is one of four K-9 officers in the Springfield Police Department. He is a German shepherd from the Czech Republic (by way of Bakersfield, Calif.) and has been patrolling the streets of Springfield for more than four years with his partner, Officer Tony Del Castillo. Creck’s trained to search buildings and inspect cars, but his favorite pastime is the vehicle pursuit. That’s where Creck gets to show off.

Only two patrol cars are allowed on a vehicle pursuit and one of those will always be a K-9 unit, Del Castillo said. This is in case the suspect leaves the vehicle and runs. Police dogs like Creck can track a suspect quickly. Human officers can take much longer and are not always effective, Del Castillo said.

According to the Springfield Police Department website, the K-9 program started after it took five officers over 90 minutes to find a theft suspect in a Bi-Mart store. When caught, the suspect admitted that he had been hiding in a box, close enough to touch one of the officers. A similar situation happened shortly afterward at a K-Mart store on 21st Street. Police officers made two inspections of the building and found no one. The K-9 was called in and found the suspect within minutes.

Like his fellow police dogs on the force, Creck is trained from a puppy specifically to assist police officers. Police dogs and their human partners spend four months living and training together before hitting the patrol on a work schedule. The first month is just for bonding, Del Castillo said. He fed Creck and played with him but issued no commands apart from disciplinary ones. Once they build a trust with their human partners, police dogs begin two to three months of command training.

All of Creck’s commands are in Czech because that’s the language he was raised with, and it’s easier than retraining in a new language, Del Castillo said.

When Del Castillo throws the rope ball Creck’s instinct is to run for it, but one command will stop Creck in his tracks. He will not move, no matter what distractions surround him, until Del Castillo gives the “go” command in Czech.

Last Saturday Creck had little to do, and that’s okay, too. There are only a couple of pursuits a month. The rest of the time is spent on patrol with Del Castillo. Sometimes that means riding in the car and waiting, never getting the chance to track “the bad guys.”

According to the 2007 “City of Springfield Police Department Annual Statistical Report” reported crime dropped 14.5 percent from 2006 and arrests were down 17.3 percent.

“We deal with 10 percent of people 90 percent of the time,” Del Casillo said. That can make for a slow Saturday, but Del Castillo doesn’t mind. Slow days means people aren’t breaking laws.

“Someone walking down the street is just someone walking down the street,” Del Castillo said.

Creck is just as easygoing as his partner when he’s not on alert, willing to come up to a stranger for a pat on the head and a scratch behind the ears. But when he hears Del Castillo issue a command, Creck is all business and ready for any situation that comes his way, even if it’s just chasing down a rope ball.