By Heather Ruenz
Editor
The first night of Citizens Academy featured an introduction to Boomer, the Whitewater Police Department K-9 officer and his handler, officer Joe Matteson.
Boomer, who lives with Matteson and his family, is a narcotics-only dog. In other words, he doesn’t chase or bite people, he simply finds drugs.
“If anything, he’ll lick you to death,” Matteson said over Boomer, who began to whine and bark.
Prior to the class beginning, Matteson said, he hid a few items around the room and Boomer was ready to go to work.
“Because of how he was trained he wants nothing more than to find them. He has no knowledge of what a drug is. To him, it’s play,” Matteson said.
Officer Matteson and Boomer began to search the room with Matteson pointing out, “You’ll see he passed up the cookies” that were sitting on a table as Boomer tried to find the “prize.” When he located the first one, he barked loudly in the direction of it.
Matteson explained that Boomer was trained to smell narcotics when small items were placed out in the open to teach the scent to the dog.
His reward is a rolled up towel, of which Matteson has several. Once Boomer had the reward in his mouth, he proceeded to make his way around the room to academy participants in an effort to get someone – anyone – to play tug-o-war with him.
“Once he gets his reward, it’s an all-out wrestling match to get it back,” Matteson said.
Tracker training, another facet to what Boomer is capable of, consisted of small pieces of hot dog laid on the ground, initially within close proximity of each other and then gradually, farther apart, in an effort to teach him to extend the area he will search.
Boomer, according to Matteson, is most effective on traffic stops but noted that police can’t delay a traffic stop without legitimate suspicion.
Boomer’s success rate on about 110 deployments during his time in Whitewater is “currently mid 80s, that when he alerts us we find something.”
Matteson said the training with Boomer is ongoing and is tracked in detail.
“We track everything, his training hours, weather conditions, his movements, his behavior because there are noticeable changes when he senses something such as an increase in his heart rate and his tail wags more,” Matteson said.
Matteson, the only officer Boomer can work with, said the training is for both of them.
“Really good training is when someone else hides something because then I don’t know where it is either,” Matteson said. “When I hide things, the worse thing I can do for Boomer is get excited when he gets close to it because then he’ll start reading me instead of trusting himself.”
Drug enforcement
Officers Adam Vander Steeg and Jake Hintz presented the drug enforcement portion of the academy. Hintz serves as the current school resource officer for the department.
Participants heard some staggering statistics about the presence of drugs in Whitewater and some heart-wrenching stories of the effects on local families.
In the past two years, for example, the following drugs were seized in Whitewater: 3,645.8 grams of marijuana; 114.4 mushrooms; 173 Adderall pills; 48.1 grams of cocaine; 44 Ecstasy pills; and 10 milliliters in liquid along with 522 steroid pills.
The total street value of those items is more than $300,000 and the Drug Enforcement Agency estimates that law enforcement intercepts approximately 6 percent of drugs reaching the streets.
Marijuana, according to the officers, is the most profitable as one plant can yield about $5,000. The strength of marijuana has increased by 8 to 12 percent from what it was in the 70s.
In addition to the drugs, other statistics shared that revolve around drug busts in Whitewater include: 24 vehicles and $46,317 cash were seized; there were 258 felony and 79 misdemeanor charges and two Whitewater High School students were arrested for dealing drugs.
But the statistics that revolved around the loss, or near-loss of life directly – or indirectly (circumstances surrounding the drug use resulted in injury or death) related to drug use in Whitewater, were difficult to hear.
In the past two years, the officers shared, there have been six known heroin overdoses with two deaths; three known cocaine overdoses with two deaths; one steroid overdose that resulted in death; and one overdose and death from Oxycontin.
It was clear the majority of participants in the academy were shocked to learn that the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater ranks 12th in drug arrests in the nation.
Hintz and Vander Steeg said the Whitewater Police Department has a good, working relationship with the UW-W police force, both of which are part of a multijurisdictional drug unit that includes Janesville Police Department and the sheriff’s departments of Walworth, Jefferson and Rock counties.
Following the presentation about drug enforcement by the officers, academy participants were allowed to chemically test drugs and compare the results to charts for proper identification.
