Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office K-9 Unit Deputies Travis Hartman and Gilbert Wakefield and Wakefield’s K-9 Skye, a Belgian Malinois, stopped by the Sedona Public Library on Friday, Jan. 12, during the Veterans History Project’s monthly Coffee With a Veteran program.
“[Wakefield] and Skye have just recently certified together as a team,” Hartman said while placing boxes containing illicit substances around the room for a demonstration. “[Wakefield] is our newest canine handler in the sheriff’s office and he has been certified with Skye for a couple of weeks now. Part of our certification process is the dogs are going to have to go through a series of tests along [with their] handler to make sure that they are considered reliable by the courts in order to detect drugs. Part of that is two vehicle searches and three room searches. Those are done blind, which means that neither the dog nor the handler know where the drugs are. This is similar to certification.”
Wakefield and Skye then reentered the room and Wakefield used Skye to identify the hidden substances. Skye is a narcotics detection dog that is certified to detect methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin and fentanyl.
“Something that dogs can do that we are not capable of doing is they can separate odor,” Hartman said. “I use an example of a stew. When we come home and there’s a beef stew cooking on the stovetop, all we smell is the beef stew. Well, when a dog walks into the room, the dog can individually smell the carrots, the onions, the celery, the stock and the beef, so they can distinguish between all of those different odors.”
The YCSO K-9 team is a criminal interdiction unit, meaning that making arrests is a lower priority for its members.
“We don’t utilize patrol dogs to chase bad guys or search buildings,” Hartman explained. “What we do is we work major interstates, both I-17 and I-40, US 93, as well as surface streets in the community to prevent the flow of drugs into the United States and into our communities. We utilize patrol canines such as Skye to help accomplish that mission. What we do specifically is we look to disrupt and dismantle cartel operations within the United States.”
Hartman stated that the K-9 unit’s “primary goal is the destruction of Mexican drug cartels.”
“In Yavapai County, we often face issues involving many organized crime syndicates,” said YCSO Public Affairs Coordinator Steve Brazell, who was also in attendance. “The overwhelming threat to our communities currently comes from those syndicates located in Mexico. However, we face challenges from criminal organizations nationally and transnationally that threaten our communities here in Yavapai County.”
Brazell declined to name what organized crime syndicates YCSO has identified as being active in Yavapai County or to provide the number of apprehensions of those syndicates’ members that YCSO has made in recent years.
“No further comment will be forthcoming,” Brazell said.
“We have historically purchased European bloodlines from places like Germany and Holland. We are now transitioning to floppy-eared dogs that we’re getting from Ireland,” Hartman said. “Skye’s the last of our pointyeared dogs. After my dog retires we’re going to start purchasing Springer spaniels and labs. We purchased those dogs from a breeder in Texas. He gets his dogs from Europe.”
“Skye wants to eat people, she wants to bite, she’s got a high drive and that’s what Belgian Malinois were bred for,” Hartman said, noting that YCSO hasn’t utilized bite dogs since 2018. “For Belgian Malinois and German shepherds, the drive outweighs the mission … Another reason for [the change] is [floppy-eared dogs] do put a more outwardly friendly appearance out … The drive for Labs and for Springer spaniels is a little bit lower and is more equal to what our specific mission is. Skye’s drive is great for apprehension, for track-and-trail trail, for patrol work and for detection. But she’s only getting to exercise that high in one discipline. Which can lead to behavioral issues when that dog is deprived of other types of disciplines.”
Hartman uses a K-9 named Haddie, which is a pointy-eared German shepherd that will be retired soon, “so the duties of demo work has been left to Skye, one of the younger dogs,” Hartman said.
“Haddie comes from Canada and was trained by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,” Partners Against Narcotics Trafficking Sergeant Jarrod Winfrey said in a June 2020 press release. “When Canada legalized marijuana, their drug dogs were replaced by the government. ‘Their loss, our gain.’” “An interesting fact about the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office is we have the first fentanyl-certified dog in Arizona and one of the first certified dogs in the country, which was K-9 Haddie, which is my dog,” Hartman said. “At one point K-9 Haddie did hold the record for the largest fentanyl seizure in the United States.”
The unit recently accepted a $1,000 donation from Wendy Skaggs, who ran a winter craft fair at the Pine Ridge Mall in Prescott that raised $500 that was matched by her employer, Improvement District Services of Prescott.
“[Skaggs] presented the checks … to Chief Deputy Jeff Newnum and members of the unit, including K-9 Skye,” a YCSO press release stated. “Newnum said the office is grateful for the donation and praised the K-9 unit for its hard work throughout 2023, including a large drug bust on Interstate 40 in northern Yavapai County on Dec. 27. Four San Antonio, Texas, residents were apprehended on various felony counts and more than 160 pounds of marijuana was confiscated from their vehicle.”
