Charlottesville Police have a new canine recruit in training

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVIR) - The Charlottesville police department has added a new member to its team. The new recruit joined the department two weeks ago from New York.

“Hopefully what he’s going to help us do is when we have calls for missing adults, missing juveniles, even if it’s a suspect, escaping from somewhere, use him and his nose,” Charlottesville K9 Officer Darius Nash said.

The latest addition to the team is an almost four month old bloodhound puppy named ‘Blue’.

“He runs around, he’s energetic, you know, he’s keeping us on our toes. He’s an all around great dog,” Nash said.

Blue will fill a hole in the department that in the past, had to be outsourced.

“We have utilized other agencies and called Albemarle County, Louisa, other agencies with bloodhounds, and sometimes they are either not at work or they’re tied up as well. So then we kind of have to try to search for people or things of that nature by ourselves,” Nash said.

Blue will go through a year long training with Officer Nash and then get to work.

“If we have calls where there are missing adults, missing juveniles, now we don’t have to call other agencies. We have our own in-house dog that will be able to help with those calls, which I think is a major thing in Charlottesville,” Nash said.

He’s also going to be a way for the community to bond with the department.

“I’ll get to know him, he’ll get to know me a little bit better, and then that’s when we will start putting him on the street and start going out to calls,” Nash said. “We’re hoping with him we can rescue people a whole lot quicker and a whole lot faster.”

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