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Hernando Today

On The Road With Brooksville K-9

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By KYLE MARTIN Hernando Today

The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 14, 2009

BROOKSVILLE - Full darkness has just settled on Brooksville and the cold is gaining strength.

Officer Shane Derryberry walks out from the station to his idling patrol car and climbs behind the wheel. The car slightly rocks as something moves behind the steel bars that divide the cab. A harness jingles.
Derryberry ignores his partner for a minute as dispatch relays the next assignment over the radio. It's a battery; boyfriend versus girlfriend; Bacon Street. Derryberry pulls out of the parking lot and steers toward South Brooksville.

Along the way, he introduces his passenger to Scout, a dusky 2-year-old German Shepherd trained to detect six types of drugs. Derryberry has been patrolling Brooksville for four years, but only about two months with Scout.

The K-9 car rolls to a stop on Bacon. A woman in a gray sweatshirt waves and walks up to Derryberry's window. She greets him as "Derryberry." He's dealt with her before.

She gives him a brief synopsis: She and her boyfriend were arguing over the keys to a car and he punched her in the face. Derryberry doesn't see any injuries. There's alcohol on her breath.

"I ain't playin'," she says. "He hit me with a closed fist this time. He ain't never hit me like that before."
Derryberry steps out of the car. The street faintly glows by the light of a small three-quarter moon hung high overhead. Derryberry removes a clipboard from his trunk and hands it to the victim.

"You're going to have to write out a statement and turn it over to the State Attorney's Office," Derryberry explains. The victim is more than willing. She seems intent to have her boyfriend's probation violated.

With the written statement completed, Derryberry tools over to the adjacent neighborhood to see if he can find the car that started all the problems. His search is brief. The gold Nissan Maxima is jutting out onto the road from Mae View Circle.
Derryberry pulls over and steps out of the car. Officer Marc Davidoff flanks him. There's a faint air of hilarity about the whole episode, but Davidoff rests his hand lightly on his gun as they approach the car. There are no second chances in police work.

The car is abandoned. Sgt. Josh Caldwell brings the victim and the car's owner over in his sport utility vehicle to remove the car. It won't start. After several failed attempts, the three officers help them push the car onto the sidewalk and out the way.

With the case cleared, it's back on the road for Derryberry. His car has a pleasant odor of shampooed dog and pine-scented air freshener. He keeps a soft brush handy to occasionally clear his laptop's screen of dog hair.

Most police dogs are live wires who wouldn't stand for a stranger to sit in their car. Scout literally didn't make a sound for the three hours a reporter rode with Derryberry.

"There's no need for yammering," Derryberry explains. "His job is to sniff out drugs."

Dispatch gives Derryberry another assignment. It's his battery complainant from earlier. Her purse is missing. Derryberry sets a course for Bacon Street when he sees a pickup truck drive around the barrier separating Hillside Estates and Tanglewood Apartments. This takes precedence.
Derryberry guns the engine and catches up with the errant pickup. It pulls into a driveway and the cruiser stops right behind it. Derryberry gets out and talks briefly with the driver.

The driver has no license, but he's known within the law enforcement circle to carry drugs. Derryberry checks his name on the sheriff's office Web site and comes back with multiple narcotics arrests. That's reason enough to use Scout.

Once backup has arrived to keep an eye on the driver, Derryberry leads Scout around the pickup. He stops and sniffs several times, but there's no alert. Derryberry lets the driver off with a warning about the barricades and writes a criminal citation for driving without a license.
Derryberry hands over the ticket.

"Get someone to drive you and stay out of trouble," he says.

The truck rumbles off into the chilly night and Derryberry hits the road again.

Editor's Note: The Brooksville Police Department recently added two drug-sniffing dogs to the force for the first time in more than 10 years. Police Chief George Turner champions the move as a way to increase the number of drug arrests in the city and seize more contraband.

The K-9's handlers, officers Joe Nelson and Shane Derryberry, perform regular patrol duties in addition to their job with the dogs. A Hernando Today reporter recently tagged along for a few hours with Derryberry and observed him take reports, run traffic radar and proactively patrol for suspicious people.

Reporter Kyle Martin can be reached at 352-544-5271 or kmartin@hernandotoday.com.

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