The Dillon County Sheriff’s Office’s vision of forming a Tactical Tracking team has finally been fulfilled.
This tactical tracking team currently includes four members of the Dillon County Sheriff Office—First Sergeant Richard Lee, Corporal Keenan Collins, Corporal Casey Cooper, and Detective Ryan Bethea.
The team currently has a Bloodhound (Bristol), who is handled by Detective Ryan Bethea.
Bristol is currently certified through Georgia K9. Bristol has countless hours of training and more than 200 training sessions to ensure that she is ready for whatever conditions may be thrown at her.
The team has another Bloodhound (Violet), who is handled by Corporal Casey Cooper. They are in the training process and are well on their way to also being certified. The team conducts extensive weekly trainings with the K9’s to ensure that they are able to know their positions as team members and that they know how to read the K9’s and what each movement the K9’s are showing means. This is a very important part of being a successful team.
The team and K9’s will be utilized in several ways to benefit the Dillon County Sheriff’s Office and the community.
This team will be effective in search and rescue operations, tracking missing and runaway children and or vulnerable adults, and criminals who may run from a crime scene or law enforcement.
The team and K9 Bristol have already been successful in finding a missing child, special needs children, suspects who ran from the scene of a crime, suspects who ran from law enforcement, and more.
To date, K9 Bristol has been deployed on ten live tracks that led to finding nine of the parties that she was deployed on.
The most recent was last week when a suspect from North Carolina allegedly snatched a purse from a victim at Walmart and ran.
The tacktical tracking team and Bristol set out to find this suspect and were successful at doing so. This led to the suspect being apprehended and arrested.
The Dillon County Sheriff’s Office and the tracking team will continue to dedicate their time and resources for the betterment of Dillon County and the safety of its citizens.
