K9 Unit

The Newton Police Department has a long history of K9 partners serving the community dating back to the early 1990s. 

The department’s first patrol dog was K9 Storm, a German Shepherd handled by Officer Collins and Officer Richardson. 

K9 Topper (1999-2006) and K9 Toby (2007-2012) were both bloodhounds that were trained and handled by Officer Burdess and were specialists in finding missing persons and criminal escapees. 

K9 Smokey, handled by Officer Walker, served the department from 2016 until June 2022. K9 Smokey is a border collie mix and was a stray prior to being trained as a dual purpose narcotics dog. During the team’s 6-year career, they were involved in over 150 deployments conducting searches of vehicles, homes and school facilities for narcotics as well as missing persons and fugitive apprehension cases. They seized illegal narcotics and guns with a street value of over $10,000. In addition to the narcotics and apprehension work, the team logged over 1200 hours of training and conducted over 30 public presentations and demonstrations to hundreds of area residents.