LAKEPORT — The Lakeport Police Department has a new addition to their workforce: Max the police dog.
Officer Jim Bell is the handler of Max, a Belgian Malinois who came to Lakeport in January. Originally from Holland, which is one of the top countries other than Germany that trains police dogs, Bell and Max went through a rigorous six-week training program from March through April with Adlehorst International, Inc., in Riverside, to qualify Bell to be a K-9 officer.
Max himself is a highly qualified dog, passing a stringent training program in Holland that sometimes passes only one dog out of 100. According to Bell, if the dogs miss even a few points, they do not become police dogs. “The six-week program is an extensive training and Max, who was the oldest dog at seven years old, performed with flying colors,” said Officer Bell”s wife, Robin Bell, who said she enjoys Max burying his head affectionately into her arm when she sits on the porch at home.
The K-9 unit for the Lakeport Police Department depends on donations alone, and is not funded through the city council. Bell applied for a grant through the Lake County Wine Alliance but was not selected. Currently, in an effort to fundraise for the unit, the owner of Perko”s caf? in Lakeport is considering having a donation cup at the register labeled, “tip a dog.”
Max is a bite dog, and is trained to enter buildings where the situation could endanger the life of an officer. “Say the door is locked and we have suspicion that someone is inside the house and armed, the key is that he can do a more thorough search and find whoever is in there easily. Once he finds the bad guy he initially won”t bite unless I command him to. He”ll just guard and bark ”yip, yip, yip,” telling us ”Hey! I”ve got ”em!” and then we can enter the building and arrest the guy,” said Bell.
To keep Max safe, he was given a bullet-proof vest through an organization founded by a now 10-year-old girl, Alyssa Mayorga, commonly referred to as the “Penny Princess” for her strategy of collecting pennies or any dollar amount in order to purchase the $600 vests for police dogs. Her organization is called “Protect-A-Dog” and Max is the 41st recipient. Two other dogs before in the county have received vests, and one of the current dogs with the Lake County Sherriff”s Department will be getting one as well.
Max is trained not only to bite, but to follow scents, find articles such as a weapon tossed by a running suspect, and the Lakeport Police Department is considering sending Max for further training to become a “dope dog,” a dog that is trained to detect drugs, if donations exceed their expectations. The cost to send a dog to a drug-training program is several thousand dollars and depends on donations alone, made to the Police Department Association K-9 fund, which was basically depleted by the $1,400 cost of the six-week training, and additional costs. “The program is non-profit and based on the donations that we get. Whatever money I spend on the dog – all the little frillies, like some new collars and those types of things – come out of the PDA fund, and the better off it is for Max,” said Bell.
The K-9 dogs in the county are available to support all agencies, and there is a weekly local training to maintain high standards, along with a monthly regional training, according to Bell. The dogs are actually considered to be officers, and wear a little badge. According to Bell, the dogs know that when they are in uniform, with an officer, or in a police vehicle that they are “on duty” and go into work mode, otherwise, they are generally docile but should not be approached on the streets without first talking to the police officer accompanying the dog, then you would approach the dog as you would any dog you are not familiar with.
