Westport, Meet Your K9 Protectors
To Protect & Serve:
From left to right: Corporal David Scinto with his partner, K9 Atlas. Corporal Kevin Smith and partner K9 Onyx and Corporal Jim Loomer with his partner, K9 Brutte.
Earlier this week the Westport PD K9 division hosted a media day inviting local press to meet and greet the members of the division and to promote awareness of this invaluable program which not only serves Westport, but often is called upon to support other area law enforcement agencies in assisting investigations and to aid in tracking and apprehension of alleged criminal suspects. The event was held as part of the efforts of the department to raise funds for the operation and improvements of the K9 division, which is solely reliant upon the public for all expenses of operation. The link to the department’s GoFundMe page can be found below.
Photos and Story By J.C. Martin For WestportLocalPress.com Click on an image to enlarge and open gallery.
As part of the event officers posed for photos with their K9s and held a question and answer session with local media. Corporal Jim Loomer invited the press into PD headquarters and showed a wall dedicated to the history of Westport’s very successful K9 program. Photos of past officers and their partners included an early officer name Foti Koskinas, who is pictured with his K9 partner, Lola and who as we all know is now Wesport’s Chief Of Police. At right, Corporal Scinto is interviewed by Channel 12 News. A link to their story can be found below.
L to R: Corporal Smith & K9 Onyx, Corporal Scinto & K9 Atlas, K9 Onyx, K9 Onyx getting up close and personal with Smith and Corporal Loomer & K9 Brutte.
Some of the many achievements of these skilled K9’s include Corporal Scinto and Atlas who secured the apprehension of a robbery suspect in Bridgeport for which they received the Daniel Wasson Memorial K-9 award. In November of 2021, while assigned as a Task Force Officer in the Auto Theft Task Force in the City of Bridgeport, Officer Scinto and other Task Force Officers engaged with several armed suspects during a robbery investigation. Upon being confronted one of the suspects engaged Officers in a foot pursuit all while having a loaded Handgun in his right hand despite by tased, after several attempts, Officers were relentless in their pursuit and with the assistance of K9 Atlas the suspect was able to be taken into custody safely without harm to Officers or the Community. K9 Atlas may have been instrumental in saving the life of his partner Scinto, or other officers who were on scene.
Photos and Story By J.C. Martin For WestportLocalPress.com Click on an image to enlarge and open gallery.
Corporal Jim Loomer is a 14 year veteran with Westport PD and his partner K9 Brutte is a Belgian Malinois a breed know for being smart, confident, and versatile and a world-class worker who forges an unbreakable bond with his human partner. It is said that to deny a Malinois activity and the pleasure of your company is to deprive him of his very reasons for being, which is partly why they are popular with many police departments. Corporal Smith has been with WPD for 24 years and Corporal Scinto has served for 11 years. His partner K9 Atlas is a German Shepherd who has served for 9 years and will be retiring at the end of this year. These K9 partners are trained in patrol work and narcotics detection. Loomer also has a second K9 named Ambo whose specialty is explosive detection. Corporal Loomer can be called upon to do a sweep of a school, synagogue or to check an a suspicious unattended bag in a building or public location such as a train station.
These dogs have been described as locating tools and they rely on their exceptional sense of smell for tracking criminal suspects or missing elderly persons or children. Scientists report that a dog's sense of smell is 10,000 to 100,000 times more acute than a human's. One of the reasons a dog has a much better sense of smell than we do has to do with the number of scent receptors: For every scent receptor a human has, a dog has about 50.
Corporal Smith is often called upon to assist local PD’s with car theft investigations. Stolen cars often crash or are abandoned and Onyx can often track suspects who were in the vehicle, when they are on shift and other PD’s don’t have a dog available during that shift. Some area PD’s have only a single K9.
The Westport Police K9 Unit has launched a Go Fund Me page for the purpose of fundraising for expenses associated with the unit’s operations.
The goal is to raise $58,000. which is needed for the purchase and for training of a new K9 who will be replacing Atlas who will be in 2024 after his 9 year career with the unit. Additionally, funds are needed to outfit K9 patrol vehicles which have multiple special features that standard vehicles do not have, such as remote “door pop” mechanisms which the officer can trigger that can open the vehicles door to allow the K9 to spring into action if needed. Heat sensors can also automatically roll down windows if the car’s engine should fail cutting the AC needed to keep the K9 safe and which sends an alert to the officer’s phone. K9 vehicles also have much greater wear and tear leading to more repairs and maintanence, and Scinto stated that his vehicles has over 9,000 idle hours.The unit is on it’s way with more than $42,000 raised so far. The kevlar vests worn by the K9’s cost about $1,000 and are level 3 ballistic vests which can protect against gunshot rounds, stabbing and slashing. All of the department’s K9’s have these vests, the most recent one purchased with funds from a single anonymous donor. Corporal Scinto told WestportLocal that the K9 vests are even better that their vests, joking that if he needed a better vest, he might borrow his dogs. These protective measures are essential as the dogs routinely face the same threats as the officers. A recent incident recounted by Scinto described a pursuit following a car-jacking out of Waterbury where the officers were on scene after the vehicle crashed. Scinto deployed Atlas to apprehend the male driver who was armed, and while attempting to take the female into custody Scinto observed the male suspect kicking Atlas, which didn’t go well for the suspect, given the German Shepherd’s bite force ranging between 175 and 238 pounds per square inch (PSI). Atlas did receive an injury requiring medical attention when the pair, while in their patrol vehicle, were rammed by a stolen car which caused poor Atlas to be launched from the back seat almost into Scinto’s lap causing him to hit his head on the rifle rack, resulting in a good-sized laceration on his head which required a vet’s application of medial “super glue”. After a couple of days recovery, Atlas was back on the job!
Please visit Westport Police K-9 Unit Fundraiser for additional information.
Another of Atlas’ career highlights was assisting a a federal agency by finding 14 KILOS of fentanyl which could have been responsible for an untold number of deaths had the most dangerous drug of our times reached the street. In yet another incident, Atlas helped track a bank robbery suspect who fled to a nearby golf course and attempted to evade capture by hiding in a garbage can. He was not successful thanks to Atlas. The bond between the officer and his K9 is a very tight one, with the two spending many hours a day together. Corporal Scinto described it this way, "He's a family member. I joke I spend more time with my dog than anybody else on this planet. Whether he's in the car or at home, we're a foot away from each other almost 24 hours a day," said Scinto.
Above left, Corporal Loomer shows his second K9, Ambo, a Labrador Retriever, and right Corporal Smith demonstrates the tremendous agility and energy of his Belgian Malinois, Onyx.
To view the News12 segment on this event, visit NEWS12.com