K-9 Officers from departments throughout the region were in Williston recently, taking part in monthly training to continue improving their skills.
The exercise was part of the officers’ regular maintenance training, which takes place each month in a different location. The Williston Police Department hosted officers from Bismarck, Mandan, Dunn County, Stark County, McKenzie County and Sidney MT at their facility for this month’s training, which focused on what officers would do if they found themselves without their K-9.
“You’re still a cop first, no matter what the training is,” explained Sgt. Lyle Sinclair with the Bismarck Police Department. “It’s kind of a unique situation where it makes the handlers think ‘What would you do without the dog?’ You’re still a cop first.”
Sinclair helped put the month’s training program together, with the K-9 handlers going through a scenario in which they locate a stolen vehicle that turns into a hostage situation. The scenario is designed to make the officers think on their feet to determine how to resolve the conflict.
“With training and K-9 training specifically, we try and make it the worst-case scenario so when the guys hit the street they feel like they’ve handled it before,” Sinclair said. “We don’t feel you rise to the occasion; we feel you sink to your level of training. So we bring the training as high and hard as we can; so when the handlers get on the street they have more confidence and they’re not going to freeze, they’re just going to deal with the situation.”
Sinclair said the officers involved have varying levels of experience, which helps everyone learn from each other. Sinclair added that he felt the inter-agency training was valuable in ensuring that when one department assists another, they all have the same level of training.
“If my guys come up here to help, I want them to know that the Williston K-9 is providing a good service to them,” he said.
“Everybody can learn from everybody,” added Williston K-9 Officer Jason Jonas. “Being able to have training with everybody and learn from everyone just equates to better results on the streets and how we can help people. At the end of the day, we’re going to be able to provide a better service to the community if we learning to do things as safe as we can.”
Williston K-9 unit has grown from one unit to 3 in the last few years. Williston’s K-9 units are trained in various tasks, including article search, tracking, apprehension, and narcotics detection. The Williston Police Department K-9 Unit was implemented with funds from the 1 percent Public Safety Sales Tax. Williston’s K-9 units have helped agencies throughout the region locate missing persons and take numerous amounts of narcotics off the streets.
“We’ve been super fortunate to have support within the Williston Police Department to have the unit grow.” Jonas said. “We’re extremely fortunate with the community we live in to have everyone’s support to provide them this great tool. You could have the best tool in the world, but if you don’t maintain that tool and practice with it, what do you really have? That’s why training like this is important, so we can be as beneficial as we can to the community.”
