Moscow Police to welcome K-9 in May

The Moscow Police Department will add a drug dog to its staff in May as it works to curb the rise in local drug cases.

Police Chief James Fry gave an update on the department’s new K-9 and other law enforcement matters Wednesday during a Moscow Chamber of Commerce luncheon.

The Moscow City Council approved the new drug detection dog program in September and the police department is getting ready to bring the dog to Moscow next month. Its handler will be Officer Ryan Snyder.

Fry said drug dogs typically serve five to seven years. If the new dog is successful in helping the department seize narcotics, Fry said he will try to add a second dog to the department so a K-9 can be available during both the day shift and night shift.

Fry said criminals have told his officers they were not worried about running drugs through Moscow because the city does not have a drug dog.

“Well, guess what? It’s time for them to worry about us because we’re going to take people to jail and we’re going to hopefully start saving some lives and helping people with their addictions,” he said.

According to data provided by Fry, Moscow has seen a rise in meth, heroin and fentanyl cases in recent years.

In 2020, the department responded to 28 meth cases, 17 heroin cases and three cases involving fentanyl. In 2021, there were 41 meth cases, 23 heroin cases and two fentanyl cases.

“The key there is fentanyl,” Fry said. “Heroin’s bad. Fentanyl’s really bad. Fentanyl’s killing people across our nation and it’s here. And we’re going to do everything we can to stop it. But we also need the help of people like you who see weird things happening in your neighborhoods.”

Other drugs are being laced with fentanyl, and Fry said his department is considering pursuing murder charges for those who put fentanyl in other substances.

Other crimes in the area have risen as well. Crimes against people rose from 79 cases in 2020 to 110 in 2021. Property crimes increased from 569 in 2020 to 666 in 2021.

Fry said this jump in crime is partly a result of people being out of the house more in 2021 than they were during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

However, he said the statistics in 2021 are substantially higher than the number of crimes reported in 2019 before the pandemic, too. Fry said other contributing factors include the fact that more people are moving to Moscow, and the increase in drug addictions leads to other crimes, such as burglaries.

As the department is dealing with this rise in crime, Fry said it is getting more difficult to hire new officers. Fry said that when he was hired 28 years ago, he competed against 75 candidates.

“Now, we’re lucky if we see five,” he said.

The department currently has 37 officers staffed, he said.

“We live in the best community that there is,” he said. “We really do. But we have to work hard to keep it that way.”

More arrests means more people are going to be booked into Latah County Jail. Fry said it is likely a new jail facility will have to be built in the future. He believes the county will begin planning for a new facility in the next five to seven years.

He said if the 39-bed jail falls below Idaho standards, it will become a 72-hour holding facility and the inmates will then have to be transferred to another jail.

Latah County Chief Deputy Tim Besst also spoke during Wednesday’s Moscow Chamber of Commerce Luncheon and said the county estimated a few years ago that building a 75-bed jail would cost $35 million.

Kuipers can be reached at akuipers@dnews.com.