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.<\/p>\n
To help combat that problem, the Allentown Police Department’s K9 Unit has been hard at work.<\/p>\n
“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,\u201d said Officer Robert Carbaugh.<\/p>\n
Carbaugh says they’re part of a partnership with the US Postal Inspection Service, which spans across multiple agencies and multiple states.<\/p>\n
“They have a lot of trust in me as a handler and also Romke as a K9 to sniff out the packages,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Authorities say that some of that drug trafficking has made its way through the United States Postal Service.<\/p>\n
“When we’re doing an assignment for them, and we’re checking a package, I have to give him the search command,\u201d the officer said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf he sees the boxes out, he already knows what he’s there to do,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
“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,\u201d Chief Roca with the Allentown Police Department said.<\/p>\n
“The things that get through here, we’re able to combat that through many different means,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Carbaugh says it’s helping slow down the current problem in the Lehigh Valley.<\/p>\n
“Right now, after everything we’ve done so far, it’s slowed down a little bit,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He says it\u2019s taken time and dedication since 2020 to gain their level of skill<\/p>\n
“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.,\u201d Carbaugh said.<\/p>\n
Most of that training is done in a different language, as Romke understands commands in German.<\/p>\n
“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\u2019s how we train them,\u201d Carbaugh explained.<\/p>\n
The energy isn’t all these trained K9s need to be a part of the division, as Chief Roca says it\u2019s about connection too.<\/p>\n
“As a handler, you have that connection with your K9, with that leash, through the enforcement; the dog wants to make you happy,\u201d Roca explained.<\/p>\n
That connection also expands beyond the uniform and is felt at home too.<\/p>\n
“At work he’s my partner; at home, he’s just like any pet you\u2019d have. He\u2019s part of the family,” says Carbaugh<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. – A few grains of sugar are equivalent to how much fentanyl can kill you in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,232,153,155,154],"class_list":["post-293409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown-area","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}