Debate delays new K-9's start with Westmoreland County Sheriff's Office

There's a debate over when a new police dog can join the Westmoreland County Sheriff's Office.

Makro, a highly trained 2 1/2-year-old German shepherd mix, was donated to the Westmoreland County Sheriff's Office and his handler, Deputy Joshua Porter, last spring.

Westmoreland County Sheriff James Albert says that "Mak" will primarily be part of the team that serves arrest warrants throughout the county.

"The benefit of the K-9 is if you indicate that someone is barricaded inside a house or hiding in a bedroom, which happens often, we're going to send the K-9 in and, surprisingly, people give up," Albert said. "Defendants give up, knowing what will happen if the K-9 comes in."

Albert says that other than a small cost of around $2,000 to go toward Porter as Mak's handler, all other costs are being taken care of by his department.

So he said he's perplexed as to why, in over 100 days and 19 different meetings, a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, hasn't come from the Westmoreland County commissioners to approve Mak for active duty.

"These dogs need to work and be trained, or they start to regress and we are at that point now, so I had to go public with this," Albert said. 

KDKA spoke with all three county commissioners on Monday, who all said they are in favor of law enforcement and Makro working for the sheriff's office.

Commissioners Sean Kertes and Douglas Chew say that ultimately an MOU is coming, but bringing on a new police dog just takes time.

"I would not characterize this as Westmoreland County slow-walking anything through purposefully," Chew said. "This is an important MOU. There are a few things required. A K-9 program has not been in effect at the sheriff's office for many years and spinning this up is not an overnight job."

"What it is, from our standpoint, is just getting it done properly and making sure that we have this set up right the first time, so that we don't have grievance issues, we don't have physical issues, we don't have issues for the department," Kertes said. "But we are not slow-playing or trying to create chaos of any means or necessity."

Commissioner Ted Kopas shared the sentiments of his fellow commissioners but added that there are bigger issues in the county right now than this.

"This county would be much better served if the sheriff put forth this kind of effort to solve his overtime budget that's hundreds of thousands of dollars over, a wasteful, costly lawsuit against the county to prevent GPS monitors in sheriff's vehicles and in addition to the tens of thousands of unserved warrants," Kopas said. "His efforts are really in the wrong place right now." 

Now again, while there is no official timeline on when Makro will be joining the sheriff's department officially, the sheriff did say that Porter is still training Mak on his own time twice a week so that when he does come on board, he will be an effective officer.