Mulberry Police Chief Suspends K-9 Unit After Dog Dies

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 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, a German shepherd named Sam Diesel died in a patrol car that had been left running. The air conditioner stopped working sometime in the afternoon. Movahedi, who had checked on the 2-year-old dog throughout the day, went to the car about 4 p.m. and found that the vents were blowing warm air, police said.

Sam Diesel had died from heatstroke.

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

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 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, Cavallaro said, because "he didn't want the police department to begin smelling like a dog," according to a report of the incident released Tuesday.

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 members of the public coming and going as well.

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 before the incident.

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

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 to notify dispatchers when making the check.