Chowan sheriff's deputy to train with new partner — K9 from Holland

Chowan Sheriff’s Deputy Danielle Colon just finished one major milestone in her career and is ready to work toward her next.

Colon just finished her associate degree in criminal justice at College of The Albemarle, an important credential for someone wanting to advance in law enforcement. She spent 2½ years working on her degree and enrolled in five courses this semester to graduate, all while continuing to work full-time as a single mother.

Now, she has been accepted for an eight-week training program at Edgecombe Community College, where she will train with her new partner due to arrive in the United States from Holland — an $8,900 German shepherd police dog fresh from basic training in drug detection and officer protection.

Colon and her new partner will come to Chowan County to work as a K-9 team for the Chowan Sheriff’s Office. They will work together as partners.

Colon said the assignment is a promotion, and she looks forward to the training, though she is unsure what to expect.

“I don’t really know. I’ve watched a lot of videos and things like that, but I don’t really know what to expect,” she said. “I know it’s going to be hard, but I’m really looking forward to the challenge.”

Sheriff Scooter Basnight is a former K-9 officer. He said the relationship between a dog handler and a dog is intensely close but not the same as between a master and a pet. A police dog has to be both what Basnight called a “force multiplier” and a social animal capable of working around the public and even children. Absolute obedience is essential.

“He or she, we don’t know yet, is going to be a narcotics detector, trained for tracking individuals, and trained for apprehension, meaning it will learn to bite and defend the handler, to defend other people,” Basnight said. “But more importantly, we want a social dog, meaning that if she’s at the elementary school, the kids can pet it.”

That tall order will require daily obedience training and sessions where the handler and dog work through takedown sessions and apprehensions. Colon will be issued a handler suit and train the animal in takedowns using herself as a subject. The dog must be under control at all times.

“We’re not holding them, letting them into the bed, loving on them, or feeding them ice cream,” Basnight said of K-9 dogs. “It’s an unfortunate word to call it, but that dog is a tool, just like a gun, baton, or pepper spray. That dog may be asked to sacrifice its life to save hers.

“That’s unfortunate because we do build bonds with these dogs,” he continued. “The dog I had, I had him for 10 years. I loved that dog. That dog was the best partner I ever had. I could tell that dog things, and I never had to worry about him telling anybody. There’s a bond and a relationship that she’ll build with that dog that she’ll never have with any human being.”

Such a complex relationship will have to be built within Colon’s existing family relationships. A single mother of five — four boys and one girl — her four sons have moved away, while her daughter still lives at home.

“It’s something we’ve discussed,” Colon said, referring to her family. “It is not a decision that I could make for myself. I had to make sure that they were on board as well because you can’t feed the dog table food and things like that. We like to horseplay, but those kinds of things can’t go on when the dog’s in the house.”

Colon has been in law enforcement for eight years, one year with the Chowan Sheriff’s Office. Before that, she was in the Coast Guard and found she enjoyed the occasional rush that came when boarding suspect boats. She admits to still being a bit of an adrenaline junkie but said that is not the payoff she now receives from police work. She said interacting, helping, and protecting the public was what she works for now.

She said the police work is a calling and not for everybody.

“I would say this: if you have a dream or a desire to do this job, you should,” Colon said. “You should take that and go with it. I don’t know that I would tell somebody to do that. I think you have to have it in your heart. You need to be a people person, and you also have to remember that everybody’s different. You have to have empathy. I think you have to have a heart for this, and I don’t think everybody does.”