Corning police adding K-9 this year: What to know about plan, training, funding
The City of Corning Police Department will soon add a K-9 that will be certified in narcotics detection to help make an impact on drug trafficking and sales.
Corning Sgt. Anthony Sanford, the president of the Crystal City Police Benevolent Association, said the organization has raised $20,000 through fundraiser donations to purchase and train the K-9 to assist police, likely beginning in mid-to-late 2023.
The police department last used a four-legged member in the early-to-mid 1980s.
“Having a K-9 is a great resource that we can’t wait to have,” Sanford said. “It will be an asset.”
Sanford said the K-9 will also be used in search-and-rescue missions.
Corning city manager Mark Ryckman said the city plans to include $60,000 in the upcoming 2023 spending plan that will pay the cost of purchasing a police vehicle that includes K-9 equipment.
How Corning K-9 will be used to detect drug crimes
Corning Police Chief Kenzie Spaulding said the K-9 will be trained to smell heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and other drugs, and will have the ability to track people.
Police dogs throughout the state and the country have been retired in recent years because they were trained to detect marijuana. New York legalized recreational cannabis use in 2021, and dispensaries recently began opening in the state.
“Not only is it going to help for locating people that have wandered off for whatever reason, and drug detection, but also community involvement and engagement,” Spaulding said. “The K-9 will be an additional tool, supplementing some of our community and school education.”
K-9 related incidents and encounters
“The training is quite a lengthy process to get certified,” Corning Police patrolman Chris Clair said. “It starts with training by the breeder once the dog is born. A little more than a year later the dog comes from Europe to a kennel in the United States, where there is additional training.”
Clair said the city handler trains with the dog for about four weeks and receives training for an additional three months before each can be certified.
In California, the state Assembly introduced a bill to ban the use of police K-9s for arrests and crowd control, citing the use of dogs as a mainstay in the "constant dehumanizing, cruel abuse of Black Americans and people of color in this country."
A 2020 report by The Marshall Project, AL.com, the USA TODAY Network and the Invisible Institute pointed to how the widespread use K-9s led to bites that caused serious or even fatal injuries, even among suspects in minor crimes such as traffic violations, shoplifting, mental health checks, trespassing and running from police.
“After the K-9 and the handler has been certified there is a minimum of two days, about 16 hours a month of additional training,” Clair said. “Everybody worries about the liability and the biting aspect and this monthly training is geared to deal with those issues. The biting is like .01% and we are working to decrease that number.”
This article originally appeared on The Leader: Corning Police Department to add K-9: What to know about plan
