Jeannette footing $30 per day kennel fee for unemployed police dog Diesel

The future of an out-of-work police dog is up in the air.

For now, Diesel, a 4-year-old Belgian malinois on Jeannette’s police force, is staying at a kennel until decisions can be made after the department’s police dog program was disbanded last month, according to city officials and handler Sgt. James Phillips.

An agreement drawn up by the city to turn Diesel’s ownership over to Phillips has gone unsigned. Phillips said he had concerns about liability until council ratified the agreement and wants his attorney to look over the document before potentially putting his signature on it.

Also, it’s unclear if becoming a family pet is the right move for Diesel, a focused dog from the Netherlands who is in his prime working life.

“They’re not in the same category as a family pet,” Phillips said. “They’re born, bred and designed to be working dogs.”

He is consulting with trainers to come up with a potential plan. Council will have to decide what route it wants to go for the dog’s future, solicitor Tim Witt said.

“The ultimate goal is to have the dog with the family he’s been with since he’s been on the force,” Jeannette manager Ethan Keedy said.

In what Phillips described as a decision that was a surprise to him, the city July 23 disbanded its police dog program. Keedy said a review showed that the costs — at least $250,000 in wages, overtime, vehicle maintenance and fuel, among other expenses — are outweighing the benefits.

“It comes down to budget constraints versus performance,” he said.

The end of the program has resulted in a war of words between city officials and Phillips, as well as on social media by community members, with many expected to attend Thursday’s 6 p.m. council meeting. The move came about a month after Phillips and Officer Matthew Painter, who is handler for Dutch shepherd Kilo, filed a federal lawsuit, claiming the city violated labor laws by not paying overtime and costs associated with caring for the two dogs outside of normal working hours.

City officials are evaluating the police dogs’ performance by focusing on on how many self-initiated arrests the canines and their handlers made that could not have otherwise been made by their human counterparts alone. That number, between 2018 and so far in 2024, is two, Keedy said. There were 152 police dog deployments in that time frame, but Keedy said the majority involved the canine either assisting another officer or helping an outside agency.

“What has the K9 officer done to initiate arrests to get drugs off the streets on their own?” Keedy said

But in Phillips’ eyes: “An arrest is an arrest.” He disputes the numbers provided by the city.

“That K9, when on duty, is a tool for the whole entire police department,” he said.

The city purchased Diesel in 2022 with the help of an $11,000 donation from the Westmoreland County District Attorney’s Office. Diesel replaced Arees, a German shepherd, who retired that year. Arees lives with Phillips, who started working as a handler in 2014. Phillips raised enough money to foot the entire bill for the patrol unit he used until recently.

He was honored with the North American Police Work Dog Association’s outstanding service award in 2019.

Kilo came with Painter when he left the Uniontown police force in 2021. Donations collected in 2023 helped pay for the purchase of an SUV to allow Kilo to join Painter on the job in Jeannette. Witt believes Kilo already belongs to Painter under an agreement when he left the Uniontown force.

Witt said both of those vehicles, which have been turned in, can be used by the police department, but the dog-related equipment will have to be removed. He described the move to disband the department as an administrative one, and not something that required a vote by council.

“The difficult decisions that city officials have to make when they’re weighing the interest of the public, at the end of the day, things come down to dollars and cents,” he said.

The proceeds from extensive fundraising Phillips did over the years for the program is in his control and is not in a city account. It remains unclear what will happen with that money.

“Without those donations, the K9 program wouldn’t have been able to be as successful as it was … and ever exist,” Phillips said.

He described a lack of communication before and after the decision to end the program, and he and other officers found out about the termination through a letter in their mailboxes at work. He believes city officials are not doing a complete search of the department’s records to determine how often either police dog was used.

In addition to criminal matters, Phillips said the police dogs have participated in 27 school locker searches and 50 demonstrations since 2015. Arees was assaulted during a domestic situation in 2018, helped flush out a suspect from a home in 2020 and located a female suspect who was hiding in an apartment in 2019, according to TribLive archives.

Both dog and handler were recognized by city council in 2016 after Arees found a stash of marijuana in a trunk while helping Penn Township police, the Trib reported. Diesel assisted in a 2022 investigation into an infant ingesting cocaine that led to five arrests.

But based on how the city is examining performance, those five arrests don’t count toward statistics because Diesel and Phillips were helping an outside agency with the investigation, Keedy said.

“It’s being proactive to the point where what is the K9 department doing to investigate on their own,” he said.

In addition to crime investigations, a police dog is valuable as a deterrent and helps human officers bond with community members, Phillips said.

“More so now than ever … public relations and community-oriented policing are one of the most important aspects of law enforcement outside of enforcement itself,” he said.

While his future is considered, Diesel will remain at a kennel at an estimated cost to the city of $30 per day, Keedy said. Diesel has been there since July 29 with all the necessities, Phillips said. It was unclear if there might be action taken by city council Thursday.