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Mulberry Police Chief Temporarily Suspends K-9 Unit

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By NEIL JOHNSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 6, 2008

The Mulberry police chief has suspended the department's canine unit until policies and equipment are in place to ensure the dogs' safety after a German shepherd left in a car died when the car's air conditioner failed.

Starting today, the department's two other dogs will no longer perform police duties and will stay in the care of their handler, Officer Sara Movahedi, Chief Larry Cavallaro said.

On July 21, 2 1/2-year-old Sam Diesel died in a patrol car that had been left running. But the air conditioner stopped working sometime in the afternoon. Movahedi, who had checked on Sam Diesel throughout the day, went to the car about 4 p.m. and found the vents were blowing warm air.

Sam Diesel had died from heatstroke.

"We want to take a good, hard look at our policies and procedures," Cavallaro said today.

He expects the suspension to last about six months, mainly because he wants to purchase new cars for the canine units and build an outdoor kennel for the dogs for when handlers are inside doing reports or other tasks.

The 2004 Crown Victoria that Sam Diesel was in had a history of air-conditioning problems, though they were supposed to have been fixed.

Sam Diesel was in the car because Cavallaro said, "He didn't want the police department to begin smelling like a dog," a report of the incident released Tuesday said.

Cavallaro said the department tried keeping the dog inside the 1,200-square-foot department, but that didn't work out with six or seven workers inside most of the time and the public coming in and out.

"Some German shepherds don't smell as good as others," he said. "People have to come to work. It wasn't a malicious thing toward the dog."

Cavallaro said he wants new vehicles that are less likely to have mechanical problems. He also wants a heat alarm fitted in the cars that will alert the handler by beeper if temperatures rise.

The department was working to install an alarm in the cruiser Movahedi was using when Sam Diesel died. She had switched from an older Ford Explorer about a month the incident.

The Mulberry Police Department has about 19 officers and two canines, though one is a semiretired dog only used to detect drugs. Cookie, a black Labrador, is about 4 years old. Silvo, a German shepherd, is about 2 years old.

The decision to suspend the canine operations came a day after the department put new policies in place governing the handling of the dogs. The policies include requiring the officer to check the dog every 30 minutes and notify dispatchers when making the check.

The report said that Cavallaro asked Movahedi to put Sam Diesel in the car on the morning of the dog's death.

Movahedi said she checked on her canine throughout the day as she worked child custody cases, bagged and filed evidence, spoke with members of the Polk County Sheriff's Office and other routine assignments, the report said.

About 4 p.m., Movahedi went to her car because she was responding to a call of an 8-foot-long alligator blocking Old Highway 37. As soon as she sat down, she noticed the vents were blowing warm air, the report said.

"I immediately looked behind my right shoulder into the kennel and saw Diesel lying motionless," Movahedi wrote. "I threw the driver's door open and reached for the back-seat door, yelling his name as I did. But when I touched him, I felt that his body was stiff."

The report states that when Officer Ricky D. Booher approached Movahedi, she walked past him and yelled, "The car killed my dog!"

On July 25, four days after she lost her canine, Mohavedi said in the report that all the air-conditioning equipment in the cruiser she was driving had been replaced with factory parts. At one point during that shift, the air conditioner started blowing hot air again, she said.

She and Booher examined the car and saw smoke coming from under the hood. Movahedi has since been driving a spare vehicle, the report said.

Reporter Ray Reyes contributed to this report. Reporter Neil Johnson can be reached at (813) 259-7731 or njohnson@tampatrib.com.

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