CHARLES CITY, IA- A new member of the Charles City Police Department is in training and his specialty is sniffing out drugs.
This new member has come a long way. He's a Black Lab that's from a rescue shelter and now a member of the Charles City Police Department.
He's sill in training with an officer, but is finally making his debut to folks in Charles City.
His name is Midnight.
Care taker, Zach Eckenrod said, "he's a duel purpose dog; a drug and tracking dog, so of course we can use him to search vehicles and houses with warrants and he'll be able to find people if they're lost."
He is the first K-9 for the department, and getting him here involved grant money from former talk show host Jenni Jones and community donations.
The police department says the desire for a drug dog started with the evening shift workers.
Lieutenant Hugh Anderson said, "we deal with a lot of things that are narcotics involved so when we do somethings we can find em in the car and we can search the car with a dog is just another tool."
Midnight is still in a bi-weekly training program with care taker officer Zach Eckenrod.
He's learning English commands and how to search for narcotics.
Officer Eckenrod said that the training is actually more beneficial to him because he learns how to read midnights behaviors when he's searching for drugs.
Eckenrod said, "he won't be put in situations where he'd be putting down criminals, whenever we take him out of the car and have him search the area or scene is gonna be safe...he's not an attack dog."
The department says the dog is another tool in the fight against drugs.
Lieutenant Anderson said, "I hope it makes the community a better place that it tells the people who are dealing drugs in the community to get out of the community. We're here and have another tool to use now, you wanna deal drugs, don't do it in our community."
Officer Eckenrod says Midnight is riding with him now on shifts, but will officially begin making calls when they are both certified in February.
