Monongahela may revive K9 unit

By ERIC SEIVERLING

eseiverling@yourmvi.com

Monongahela residents may soon see new faces in the city’s police department in the upcoming months thanks to the department’s efforts to hire new part-time officers.

And if police Chief Kevin Harris gets his way, one of those new officers will walk on four legs.

At council’s work session Monday morning, Harris told city officials he’d like to bring back the police department’s K9 unit, which has been dormant for nearly three years.

Thanks to recent donations to the program’s financial account and early fundraising efforts by Harris and Officer Jeff Toth, the police department may see a K9 officer as soon as next spring.

“Officer Toth is interested in doing the program and wants to see a strong response on getting that program back,” Harris said. “We’re lucky we’re in the position that we had a K9 in the past. We’re not going into this blindly.”

The police department’s first K9 officer, Beny, served on the force with his handler, Officer Larry Maraldo, from 2008 to 2018.

Harris said the program was temporarily stopped when Beny died unexpectedly in October 2018.

“It becomes rough for a handler to lose a dog like that,” Harris said. “It’s not like losing a car and getting a new one. They were giving the handler some time to work through that.”

Harris said the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 brought the program to a halt.

“It’s been sitting on hold,” Harris said. “We didn’t get rid of the program; it’s just been dormant.”

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