Crime & Safety

Decriminalized Marijuana Gets Dog Axed From Lakewood Police Gig

Phelan's marijuana-sniffing training compromises the city's investigations when marijuana is found with other drugs.

One police dog's nose is so effective at spotting marijuana that it cost him a job with the Lakewood Police Department.

The dog, Phelan, was originally provided to the local police force about five years by the Department of Corrections and has been trained to sniff out weed. The two agencies' deal involved the city feeding and caring for the DOC dog following six weeks of canine and handler training.

And Phelan is good at his job, a little too good, in fact. Here's why: the passage of Initiative 502, which decriminalized small amounts of marijuana.

Now that the stuff is legal, authorities worry that Phelan's training to sniff out marijuana can actually hamper their ability to, say, obtain a search warrant.

Assistant Chief Mike Zaro explained that police dogs such as a Phelan can't decipher what kind of drugs they're sniffing. They just know that there is a drug.

If, say, officers were trying to obtain a search warrant because Phelan sniffed out drugs on a person, they couldn't say to a judge with a 100-percent certainty that what the dog sniffed was illegal.

"We have to be to say we’re going in to look for an illegal substance," Zaro said.

Younger dogs are being trained to detect drugs even if they're in the proximity of marijuana. The department tried to retrain Phelan, but he couldn't adapt.

On Monday, the Lakewood City Council approved a staff recommendation to give Phelan back to DOC (technically selling him for $1) because he can't serve as a police dog.

But don't worry. Phelan doesn't look to be completely out of the job.

Instead, he'll be used by DOC to sniff out drugs on its campuses and facilities.


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