Police canine units get show of loyalty from St. Paul City Council

St. Paul chief defends his police dogs as essential to the city's culture.

By ANTHONY LONETREE, Star Tribune

Last update: May 29, 2009 - 12:35 AM

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Months after gaining national recognition in an Animal Planet TV series, St. Paul's police canine unit got local attention in separate events this week, both offering backers good news in tight times.

On Wednesday, Chief John Harrington told the City Council that department leaders objected to an audit recommendation to cut the 22-officer unit by half, prompting Council President Kathy Lantry to say, "I'm against that," too.

And on Thursday, the police department hosted a sun-splashed graduation ceremony for new K-9 teams at its training facility. While St. Paul had no dogs of its own in the 11-team graduating class, it did share its expertise with others, police spokesman Sgt. Paul Schnell said.

Harrington's appearance before the council came five months after a "best practices" assessment of his department by Berkshire Advisors Inc., of Bay Village, Ohio, suggested a sharp cutback in the K-9 unit, which now has 21 officers overseen by a sergeant.

The Berkshire Advisors study looked at seven other "benchmark departments," and found the average K-9 unit had 10 officers, with Minneapolis second to St. Paul with 19. In 2007, the report added, St. Paul had 961 calls requiring a K-9 response, or an average of 46 calls per officer that year.

The department's K-9 deployment was "extremely large," the report concluded.

Berkshire's K-9 recommendation was but one of many subjects the chief touched on Wednesday. He said that department leaders had looked at the feasibility and desirability of many of the study's recommendations, and that the K-9 cutback wasn't desirable.

'They're force multipliers'

"It really just doesn't fit how St. Paul operates," he told council members. "It doesn't fit our culture. It doesn't fit our values of excellence."

No one argued.

"Please don't do [it]," Council Member Melvin Carter III said. "The dogs are cool," especially when jumping.

"They're force multipliers," Lantry said. "It just isn't that they're cool."

"Yeah, all that, but they're cool," too, Carter replied.

"They're part of officer safety -- getting the job done," Lantry said.

"And they're cool," Carter continued.

To which Lantry conceded: "I think it is, of course, very cool, too. But, I mean, they do the work of another officer."

Sometimes 10 officers, Harrington said.

On Thursday, at the Timothy J. Jones Canine Training facility, dozens of friends, family members and law-enforcement officers welcomed participants from Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin into what St. Paul Assistant Chief Tom Smith called "the brotherhood and sisterhood" of K-9 handlers.

Dogs crawled under obstacles simulating porches. They leapt through barricades resembling windows. They climbed ladders. They grabbed hold of arms of fleeing "suspects." They barked and they heeled.

All in all it was pretty cool.

Anthony Lonetree • 612-673-4109