K-9 Sam and his Partner Officer Devin Tucker.
MONROE — Monroe Police narcotics K-9 Sam had the largest find of his three-year career with partner Officer Devin Tucker while assisting the Everett Police Department in the search of a vehicle a couple months ago.
Five-year-old Sam alerted the on-scene officers that the vehicle contained illegal substances. The contents of the vehicle included two kilos of heroin, 900 M-30 pills (suspected fentanyl pills), 100 grams of methamphetamine, one handgun, one rifle, $22,487 in cash, drug sale equipment and drug paraphernalia.
“Everett (PD) had stopped a vehicle and the vehicle left the area where they were trying to make the initial stop. When they finally located the vehicle, the driver fled,” Tucker said.
“They called me out because the individuals in the vehicle had prior drug history, prior history with drug manufacturing, and delivering illegal narcotics.”
The occupants of the vehicle fled the scene. Because narcotics were suspected, a K-9 unit was required to search the vehicle.
“The big thing I try to promote when they’re calling out is, Sam can do things humans can’t do, he’s an incredible animal,” Tucker said.
Sam doesn’t live the life of a normal dog. He works three days on, three days off in a single work “set,” with his partner and owner, Officer Tucker.
During a set, Officer Tucker and K-9 Sam get in a minimum of four hours of training.
“We are pretty good at scheduling full days that are just devoted to canine work,” Tucker said.
“We have regional training groups that get together, it’s a lot of the Snohomish County dogs.”
Officer Tucker explained that the goal of the events are to allow other K-9 units to watch each other’s dogs and allows for other officers to hide “the find” so the officer and his K-9 partner can truly practice and train for real situations.
Although because an officer’s job is so unpredictable, oftentimes Officer Tucker has to perform training exercises with K-9 Sam in the field.
“It can be something where I just spend the day in the city of Monroe doing stuff at the City Hall buildings at the police department, the parking lots, the parks, wherever I gotta go,” Tucker said.
Police K-9s such as Sam are trained to search for controlled substances and signal them with a passive alert.
“Passive alert dogs will do a sit and stare alert,” Tucker said. “They’ll just kind of sit and almost turn into a statue and stare where the best source of odor is coming from.”
K-9 units are often called to assist because of the unique work done by the furry members of the police force.
