ADA — The Ada Police Department lost a valuable member of its department Thursday morning when its sole K9 officer, Jaeger, was struck and killed by a vehicle. He was not on duty at the time of the accident.
According to the Ada Police Department press release, Jaeger’s handler, Sgt. Matt Purdy, had taken Jaeger out to relieve himself. Jaeger pulled away from his handler, slipping his collar and went after a motor vehicle. The vehicle struck and killed Jaeger. The driver was not at fault. The incident was out of character for Jaeger.
“The question might be asked, how can this happen with such a well-trained dog. K9s know when they’re on duty. We put a certain collar on our K9 and that dog knows okay, now I’m searching for drugs. If we put a different type of harness on the dog, that dog knows, now I’m searching for a bad guy or I’m searching for a missing person. If we put another collar on that dog, now I might be used in handler protection. And K9 Jaeger was not on duty. He had none of those collars on him. He had a regular collar on that meant, ‘hey I got to go out and use the restroom.’ And this also is just so very not like Jaeger to do what he did yesterday,” said Michael Harnishfeger, chief of the Ada Police Department.
Jaeger, who was almost 3 years old, had served the Ada Police Department since October 2015. He was responsible for numerous drug and criminal arrests in Ada and throughout Hardin County. Sgt. Matt Purdy with K9 Jaeger was named the 2016 Ada Employee of the Year.
“Jaeger and the K9 team was an important part of the Ada Police Department and very effective. Probably one of the most impressive dogs that I had seen in action in detecting drugs. Very, very good at that,” said Harnishfeger.
The Ada Police Department will assess the future of its K9 program. Jaeger was the first K9 unit at Ada.
“A K9 program is easily going to cost $10,000. And so it is an expensive proposition. When we consider the future, we have to consider all aspects. We have to consider the money, we have to consider the time, we have to consider the training. It’s just a tremendous amount of effort to maintain a K9 unit. But, in my view, a very important and positive thing to do,” said Harnishfeger. “They are valuable, absolutely.”
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