Friday With A First Responder

CLOQUET- Sometimes we don't notice what's going on behind the scenes and how hard people work to keep us safe and healthy. We really wanted to dedicate this series to those individuals. Today we visited with a new officer at the Cloquet police department.

We were at the Cloquet police department with Detective Scott Holman and his new dog, officer Raja. He taught us little bit about police K-9 dog makes the grade and how Raja serves her community.
Raja just returned from drug detection training in Iowa in September and she is already a pro.
Holman said, "she's able to locate methamphetamine, cocaine, ecstacy, heroin, marijuana."
She shows us how talented she is when officer Holman hides various drugs, and she sniffs them out, lickity split.

"The first hide we're gonna do, is we're gonna place out some marijuana, this is approximately 28 grams or one ounce of marijuana, we'll go ahead and put it down here in the cabinet, what i'll do is i'll let her in the room and i'll giver her the search command and she will find the controlled substance hidden behind the doors.
The marijuana was no challenge for Raja. She was able to find it in only a few seconds.
She did just as well on round two. "This is three point five grams of cocaine, commonly known on the street as an 8–ball of cocaine, we'll place the hide over here."

Holman explains how they trained Raja and even gave me a chance to get in on the action.
He said, "when I send her loose she'll scan the room searching for narcotics, when she finds the narcotics, she'll sit down and pin point stare at it, what she is looking for is a reward, she's a ball reward dog, with a passive alert so when she sits down and stares at an object, that's where the narcotic is hidden, and then a ball is just thrown in for a reward."

Raja finds it right away. Her goal is to help make Cloquet and neighboring communities a safer place for everyone. "Sometimes to search a house, it could take officers several hours to search it, where she comes in she can cut it down and search a house in just 5 minutes."
This helps to save time and frees officers to go out on other calls.
Raja is the department's second narcotics dog. Tessa and Detective Holman worked together for 14 years.
"These were some of her bigger busts, that was contributed, with her service working here. This one right here is one with approximately 20 pounds of marijuana that she got out of a motor vehicle on the free way, this is another one where she ended up getting 8 pounds of marijuana and a pound of meth. That was another traffic stop out on the freeway. One down here was another 15 pounds of marijuana that she'd taken off on a traffic stop."
Tessa and detective Holman also won several awards and he will soon start competing with his new partner.
Holman says he loves working with the dogs and getting to experience a special bond.
He said, "when you're a canine handler the relationship that you have with your partner is not only a work relationship but a personal relationship. You spend time at work with her, when we get done, she gets to come home with me live at my house and be a part of my family at home"