By Jessie Gambrell
Staff Writer
In addition to this campus being the No. 1 safest four year university in California according to Stateuniversity.com, we are also the home of our own bomb-sniffing EOD K-9, Vince.
Vince was brought to our campus three years ago by Sgt. Raymond Derouin, who had a hunch to bring an Explosive Ordinance Detection (EOD) K-9 on campus to protect students from harm. Though Vince has not yet encountered a real bomb, they have been called in on several accounts of potential (but false) threats.
“Dogs are smart, he loves it here, he knows the campus very much, and especially loves the parking structure where he gets to play and twice a day we go to search the campus. He is very approachable and friendly,” Sgt. Derouin said.
Vince is an 88 lbs., 6-year-old field Labrador who was a rescue from Idaho, set to be put down, when someone had the idea to test him for police K-9 skills and he passed. After discovering him to have heart-worms, he was almost going to be put down again, but was successfully treated and cured of his health threat. David Dorn of K-9 S.T.A.C. (Specialized Training And Consultant) from San Francisco took Vince in and trained him for police work. Sgt. Derouin, who has been here since 2007 (previously spent eight years as a Riverside sheriff) proposed to the UPD the importance of having an EOD K-9 on a college campus.
“I wrote the program for Vince in 2009, Vince is our first K-9. I wrote out the need for a K-9, what I articulated in my PowerPoint was that campuses are a target. You have to add another level of safety,” Sgt. Derouin said.
Vince is a “passive-alert” police dog, meaning that he will sit down when he finds the bomb, and gets repeated training four to five times a day with a sample bomb-sniffing exercise to keep his nose sharp. He is also a “single-purpose” police dog, meaning that his only purpose is to detect smells, not control (military dogs).
“Everyone loves him, he [Vince] was on TV at a Charger’s game once and was even featured on the front page of the North County Times. He was even in a competition in Modesto County and won first place for the fastest finding time. We get a fair amount of brand recognition,” Sgt. Derouin said.
Vince is most likely going to be retiring next year due to a bad (but attended to) case of hip dysplasia that led to the need of finding a smaller car for him to get into, given that he must jump in and out the car many times a day. They hope to find a replacement or two once Vince goes into retirement.
“We don’t want to run him into the ground, we want him to have a comfortable retirement. He isn’t property; he is more like a human to us. He has been a great asset and everyone loves him,” Sgt. Derouin said.