Andrea Lutz
6:30 pm
November 15, 2018
BILLINGS- With four paws, pointy ears and a super sniffer, the Billings Police Department has a new tool for keeping drugs off the streets.
Meet Tabasco. He’s a 16-month-old Belgian Malinois all the way from the Netherlands, and he’s the fifth K9 to join the Billings police force.
He’s a drug dog and tracker.
Tabasco and his handler, Officer Jared Lausch, have spent weeks training together, first at a facility in Pennsylvania and then working the streets.
And if you’re wondering where the name Tabasco comes from? It’s was Lausch’s idea.
“One of the trainers called him Tabasco and said he was the spicy Malinois, and I was like, ‘well he’s red he is kind of spicy and that sounds appropriate.’ So I just changed it to Tabasco, and he loves it when I say it,” said Lausch. “So we stuck with it.”
A dog like Tabasco can cost as much as $10,000, said Lausch. But he also said the K9 team can they make up for that amount by bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars in drug seizures.
In their first 10 days together, Lausch said they went on 14 drug seizure calls. On their first day, Lausch said Tabasco sniffed out 102 grams of meth.
