Summer may be out but some CCISD classrooms are still in use for some very special students.
They happen to be K-9s with the Corpus Christi Police Department. Our Ally Coscetti got an up-close look at their weekly training session.
“we do anything we can to keep our campuses safe,” Kirby Warnke, Chief of Police at CCISD told us, “and they can know the campus, we know how they work, they’ll know how we work, and so I think it’s a win-win for both of us.”
K-9’s on campus is no longer an uncommon sight to see.
In fact, every Wednesday from 8 to 3, the CCISD student support center shares its’ classrooms with CCCPD and their 5 K-9’s to work on strengthening skills.
“The narcotics dogs are trained to find – cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine, and heroin. Those are the four orders that they are certified. So we are primarily looking for one of those four.” said dog trainer Sean Orsak.
As serious as these K-9’s responsibilities can be, their motivation comes from the fun of getting the job done.
“do they still have the drive to find the toy?” Orsak asks, “because finding the drugs or the bomb odor is all about finding the toy. if that dog doesn’t have that high toy-drive, it’s probably not going to work out.”
For training, the school setting is split into two sectors for narcotics and bomb-finds.
these practice-runs at the school aren’t only beneficial to the K-9, but also to the handler.
Orsak explains, “the handlers are tasked with trying to figure out: a, is there something in here? and if there is something in here, can we find it? so the handlers get tested at the same time.”
It might be the most critical test this CCISD building administers, and one of it’s most essential.
“but how do you get good at math? you redo the same problem over and over again. you practice.” Orsak says, ” well, it’s the same for the dog. so it’s a good bridging tool, we have something in common. ‘oh, so you have to do the same thing we do?’ yeah, we’re doing our homework.”
