The Camp Verde Marshal’s Office now has three dogs on its K-9 team. CVMO has acquired two new dogs, a 3-year-old yellow Labrador retriever named Chopper, purchased using state opioid funding, and a 15-month-old Labrador retriever named Maverick received for free from Pacific Coast K-9, after originally being a K-9 with the Dallas Police Department.
“Their main goal is drug detection and helping us find drugs. It’s as simple as that,” said Deputy Jacob Zeid, the handler of Gunner, CVMO’s current golden retriever K-9.
The dogs will also be used for public events but will primarily be used for drug detection. Their strong sense of smell will be used during traffic stops to tip officers off and give them probable cause to inspect vehicles.
“For traffic stops, when we reach a certain legal threshold, we can deploy a dog on a car for a sniff just around the outside of the car,” Zeid said. “Once — if a dog alerts on a car, we’re able to search that car as long as the dog has been trained and certified through our policy and is a reliable dog, we can now search that car.
“The benefits are just — they’re extreme benefits to us because now we can find these drugs legally. That’s our whole goal is without violating people’s rights we make a stop, we have calls for service, whatever it is that ties to the drug world are dogs are just that extra step to help us investigate further and further and further and seize as many drugs as we can and hopefully benefit the community in that way.”
The dogs have undergone a training process with deputies and are still required to be certified by CVMO. They have been trained to detect methamphetamine, Cocaine, heroin and fentanyl. K-9s trailed to detect marijuana were retired or rotated out of service after Arizona voters legalized recreational marijuana in 2021.
Dogs used for these purposes last about five to 10 years with their agencies. They are not trained to be attack dogs but exclusively for drug detection. Deputies made it a point that they do not work the dogs to the end of their lives; after their tenure is over, they are eligible for adoption, often by their handlers.
