Collinsville Police K9 provides valuable assistance
Rocky, right, with Collinsville Police Officer Trent Ross. (photo courtesy of the Collinsville Police Department)
by Randy Pierce • Recently honored as the Collinsville Police Department Officer of the Month, K9 Rocky has contributed valuable support to the local and area law enforcement effort, including response to an incident during which a shooting occurred in Granite City.
Rocky, who is a partner of Collinsville Police Department Officer Trent Ross, spent several hours tracking the suspect in that December incident, where Tyler Timmons, representing the Granite City law enforcement agency, was struck twice by gunfire when responding to a call about an unwanted individual on someone’s property.
In doing his job in pursuit of Timmons’ assailant, Rocky was able to track the suspect and help human officers gather multiple items of evidence when doing so. Rocky also played a vital role, many days before that incident, helping to locate a missing individual through snowy weather, sniffing and tracking for over a mile in an area in excess of eight acres.
The Timmons incident was addressed recently for the Madison County Board Public Safety Committee by the chief deputy of the sheriff’s department, Marcos Pulido, who described the shooting, which resulted in the Granite City officer’s hospitalization and subsequent release, as “a bad thing” that in turn, however, revealed some positive outcomes concerning the effectiveness of local law enforcement agencies, especially when working together on an effort.
“You also get to see how our county reacts,” Pulido said, “when a crisis happens. It was an extremely chaotic scene where you have an officer who went to deal with what would be, I don’t like the word ‘routine,’ but just a common call, he gets shot and the person takes off running.”
The suspect dashing across lanes of traffic during a busy time of day, Pulido went on, drew an organized operation by cooperating police and sheriff’s department personnel that “revealed the amount of dedication and communication that everyone had.”
Citing the efforts of “phenomenal dispatchers” coordinating all of the 100 or so officers responding to this crime, Pulido said so many of all of them involved “shined” during the very stressful situation.
A vital component of all this, he noted further, was the command personnel, “strategic people” who have to coordinate who goes where and what they do while being present and observing, considering and reacting to various circumstances.
