11/21 – Sheriff’s Office Gains New Four-Legged Crime Fighter

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By John Burton
FREEHOLD – A new four-legged crime fighter with a particularly sharp sense of smell has joined the ranks of the Monmouth County Sheriff’s Office.
The office has announced the addition of Skye, a 10-month-old female bloodhound, certified by the National Bloodhound Association, as the newest member of its K-9 Unit.
Skye is the first of her breed the sheriff’s office has had in several years and the only one working in law enforcement in Monmouth County. She came from the Southern Pride Bloodhounds n Northern New Jersey, according to information provided by the sheriff’s office.
Bloodhounds have 230 million olfactory smells and are regularly trained, as Skye was, to track skin cells from humans.
Skye and her K-9 handler Kurt Kroeper trained for 12 weeks with bloodhound instructors from the Ocean County Sheriff’s Office.
After that effort, the K-9 team then spent a week in North Carolina for additional training at the National Bloodhound Association with 34 other K-9 teams of dogs and handlers, earning national certification. The teams would track scents in rural areas through the woods, fields, creeks and garbage, along with parking lots and busy roadways, as far as 2 miles away.
“Skye will be a significant asset to our K-9 Unit, since her sole purpose is to locate people,” Monmouth County Sheriff Shaun Golden said. “Through tracking and trailing, this highly trained K-9 with a stronger sense of smell than any other breed, will assist the sheriff’s office and local police departments in apprehending criminals and locating missing persons, such as children and individuals with Alzheimer disease.”
The Monmouth County Sheriff’s Office currently has six officers/handlers and dogs assigned to its K-9 Unit, made up of one tracking team, one narcotics team, two explosive detection teams, one explosive/patrol team and one narcotics/patrol team.