CMPD Adds New “Officer”

CHARLOTTE, NC — The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department has a new officer. A K9 unit with a specific mission.

The department’s Crime Scene Search team spent five months training a special dog to search for human remains. He’s a vital resource for CMPD and other local law enforcement agencies.

Meet Morty! The 18-month-old golden retriever is CMPD’s human remains detection dog.

“We had to borrow a cadaver dog from another police department, probably about six or seven times,” says Sgt. Katherine Scheimreif. “And we just got to the point we realized we need to have that resource ourselves.”

That point came after the department borrowed a cadaver dog to search for the body of a Charlotte Uber driver who was killed, and his body dumped across the state line in Rock Hill.

“He is bred to do this type of work,” says Morty’s handler Kenny Burh. “Not necessarily human remains, but odor work. He’s meant to be a working dog.”

Morty was bred for this work in Colombia, South America. The dogs are bred to use their noses, then trained on a specific scent. He lives with Burh, a crime scene investigator and CMPD’s first ever civilian K9 handler.

“Crime scenes are so specific,” says Sgt. Scheimreif. “We wanted somebody with a forensic advanced knowledge, like Kenny has, going on these crime scenes in order to preserve necessary evidence.”

Morty works on finding human remains in a variety of situations and locations, through continuous training scenarios. He’s even training to find bodies in the water.

“If I do what I’m supposed to,” says Burh. “If I search for these odors. If I recognize these odors. Much like anything we do, you do something correct then they get a reward. So that’s a lot of his drive is; I want to work, and work, and work until I get that ball.”

“He’s done some searches in woods, on roof tops, inside, outside, in cars,” says Scheimreif. And he has done quite well on all of them.”

Morty completed a 12-week training program last month.

Kenny wanted to make sure he thanked the other handlers in the CMPD K9 Unit for all their help in training Morty.