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Ward County Sheriff’s Office receives donation toward purchase of new police dog

The Ward County Sheriff’s Office has received a $14,500 donation from Hunt Oil to help fund the purchase of a K9 and the cost of training a police dog.

Chief Deputy Larry Hubbard said Thursday that the sheriff’s department has also received verbal acknowledgement of additional funding from another source, but hasn’t received confirmation yet. If the second donation is made, the department will have reached its total goal of $29,500.

Hubbard said the sheriff’s department received approval from the Ward County Commission on Aug. 6 to begin a fundraising campaign and they are nearing their goal just eight weeks later.

Now the department will need to make arrangements to purchase a dog and to pay for its training.

Hubbard said the new police dog will receive training in narcotics detection and in search and rescue. The department will not have the dog trained to detect marijuana because medical marijuana is now legal and they anticipate that recreational marijuana could be legal in the future. A police dog that is trained to detect marijuana could be useless in an investigation into the use of other illegal drugs when marijuana is also present, since a defense attorney could argue that the dog detected a substance that is legal instead of other types of drugs.

Hubbard said there are several people at the sheriff’s office who are interested in receiving training to become a handler for a new K9.

The Minot Police Department currently has three police K9s and there are also several K9s at Minot Air Force Base.

Hubbard said even though the funds are nearly raised, there will also be ongoing costs associated with the program. For instance, once the dog is purchased and trained, the sheriff’s department will likely also need to raise funds to purchase a body armor vest for its new dog.

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