Two New Bomb-Sniffing Dogs Join SEPTA Police Force
By John McDevitt
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Two SEPTA police officers are getting new partners who specialize in explosives detection. They're canine graduates of the Penn Vet Working Dog Center.
Ronnie, a German shepherd, has been teamed up with officer Javier Class, and Kaiserin, a Dutch shepherd, is the new partner of officer Cory Fox.
Thomas Nestel, chief of the SEPTA Transit Police, says the canine officers are a great asset to the transit authority.
"They'll do patrol work, they'll be riding on the subway and the El," Nester says. "They'll be riding on the Regional Rail lines. They'll respond to all of those calls for unattended packages or bags left behind. We check everything that is left on the platform to ensure that it is safe, and we use the dogs to do that. It speeds up the process so we don't have to shut down the system for long."
The dogs will now go through SEPTA explosives training class, and will go into in the field in mid-April.
This makes 14 canines on the SEPTA police force.