ALLENTOWN, Pa. – A few grains of sugar are equivalent to how much fentanyl can kill you in a matter of moments. When you realize how much of it is making it through our mail system, the reality becomes even more concerning.

To help combat that problem, the Allentown Police Department’s K9 Unit has been hard at work.

“When they have packages, they’ll give me a call and say, ‘Hey, can we meet up to run these packages? We also do other details,” said Officer Robert Carbaugh.

Carbaugh says they’re part of a partnership with the US Postal Inspection Service, which spans across multiple agencies and multiple states.

“They have a lot of trust in me as a handler and also Romke as a K9 to sniff out the packages,” he said.

Officer Carbaugh and 9-year-old Romke are being recognized for their work with the United States Postal Inspection Service, as Lehigh County has been cited as a high-intensity drug trafficking area.

Some law enforcement officials say this is in part due to the fact that Lehigh County serves as a strategic distribution corridor, with Interstate 78 and 476 connecting the region directly to New York City and Philadelphia.

Authorities say that some of that drug trafficking has made its way through the United States Postal Service.

“When we’re doing an assignment for them, and we’re checking a package, I have to give him the search command,” the officer said.

“If he sees the boxes out, he already knows what he’s there to do,” he explained.

“It depends on what types of seizures are being made on the ports; sometimes our federal government is very adept at stopping them from coming in here,” Chief Roca with the Allentown Police Department said.

“The things that get through here, we’re able to combat that through many different means,” he added.

Some of the drugs that have made it into the area through mail in the last year include 30 pounds of cocaine, 15 pounds of meth, and 6 pounds of fentanyl, all of which Romke, a German Shepherd from the Czech Republic, detected during parcel details.

Carbaugh says it’s helping slow down the current problem in the Lehigh Valley.

“Right now, after everything we’ve done so far, it’s slowed down a little bit,” he said.

He says it’s taken time and dedication since 2020 to gain their level of skill

“It took several years of me training just about every day at work on my time off, training with him to get to him to become that passive alerter.,” Carbaugh said.

Most of that training is done in a different language, as Romke understands commands in German.

“They have to have a high ball drive, meaning they have to want to play; they have to want to find that toy, because that’s how we train them,” Carbaugh explained.

The energy isn’t all these trained K9s need to be a part of the division, as Chief Roca says it’s about connection too.

“As a handler, you have that connection with your K9, with that leash, through the enforcement; the dog wants to make you happy,” Roca explained.

That connection also expands beyond the uniform and is felt at home too.

“At work he’s my partner; at home, he’s just like any pet you’d have. He’s part of the family,” says Carbaugh