University Police officers pose with their canine companions. Left to right: Cpl. McCann, Bracken, Cpl. Suthard, Jimbo, Cpl. Fitzgerald, Pink, MPO Ottey, Chief and Sgt. Jones.
No matter where he is, Cpl. Evan McCann is almost always with his partner.
The two are practically inseparable. Spending close to all of their waking moments together, McCann said the strength of their bond is one of the best parts of their relationship.
“I still can’t get over how strong our bond is,” McCann said. “I spend more time with her than I do my wife. We do everything together except sleep, and when someone is with you all the time, that bond becomes very strong.”
The partner by McCann’s side is Bracken, a chocolate Labrador retriever, and the two of them make up just one of the handler-K-9 teams working for University Police.
In August 2012, the department introduced its K-9 Explosive Unit to search for explosives around the campus and at special events. The K-9-handler teams do sweeps of buildings and vehicles or act as security for people entering a building at large events or VIP visits, McCann said.
In addition to McCann and Bracken, the four-team unit includes Cpl. John Fitzgerald and Pink, Cpl. Matthew Suthard and Jimbo, and Master Patrol Officer Jason Ottey and Chief.
McCann said University Police wanted to add the unit and received a grant from the Homeland Security Department and Johns Hopkins University to get four police dogs.
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“We wanted to stop events like the Boston bombing or things like the ones you hear about that happen overseas,” McCann said, “and the [DHS] wanted to invest in that idea.”
Once the program was announced, any officer interested in becoming a handler was able to apply. McCann said about 15 people applied and interviewed for the job, and in the end four handlers were chosen.
“We had to do a physical agility test, and we had to run one-and-a-half miles in a certain amount of time,” McCann said. “You can’t have someone do this job if they don’t have physical strength.”
After acquiring the dogs from K2 Solutions, a K-9 detection services vendor in North Carolina, the K-9-handler teams went through 14 weeks of training before graduating the course on Aug. 10, 2012.
The handlers and dogs were first trained traditionally, learning skills such as leash directions and conducting searches, before the dogs were trained to work off leash and without direction from their handlers. They also had to learn to look for explosives on people, McCann said.
“Our Improvised Explosives Detection Unit is an asset to the university community as it provides an additional layer of safety and security not only for special events such as athletic events [and] presidential events, but also our daily functions, such as patrolling our university community,” said University Police spokeswoman Sgt. Rosanne Hoaas.
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David Lloyd, University Police chief of staff, said the unit is constantly adjusting to make the campus as safe as possible.
“We’re always evaluating everything we do to make sure that we’re operating as well as we can be,” Lloyd said. “We are always evolving.”
Lloyd said the department would love to expand the unit in the future.
“We’re always working for funding, and we hope to continue to grow with the number of officers we have here in the department,” he said.
McCann said the relationship he has with Bracken is the best part of his job. But although each K-9 and handler has their own bond, McCann added that the unit still functions as one large team.
“It’s definitely one big unit,” he said. “We’ll go to an event together, and we might not be in the same place the whole time, but we’re still one unit, and it’s good to have us all together.”
CORRECTION: Due to a reporting error, a previous version of this article misspelled the name of Master Patrol Officer Jason Ottey and incorrectly identified David Lloyd as a captain. The article has been updated.
