By Melanie Patterson

The North Jefferson News



The city of Warrior has a new crime-fighter.

Iso, a 2-year-old German Shepherd, officially started his job at the Warrior Police Department on Monday.

However, he and handler Sgt. Corey Archer had already been at work during the weekend when Iso was called out to searched a car for drugs.

Archer, who works investigations, narcotics and general cases for the department, just returned from a four-week training session in North Carolina, where he learned to work with Iso.

Archer has been a police-dog handler for several years. The Warrior department had a drug dog named Betty for years, but had to put her to sleep recently because of her advanced age.

Since he has experience working with dogs, Archer said the training session was mostly review for him. But he did learn a few new things.

“Technology has advanced over the years,” he said, adding that trainers now use techniques that he had never used.

Archer said he likes being a police-dog handler because he has always loved dogs.

The dog and the training cost $7,900. The department bought Iso from Highland Canine Training.

Archer said half of the money was from drug seizures, part was from the city, and the rest was from two private donations.

The money is well worth it, according to Archer.

“It’s amazing to watch what they can do,” he said of police dogs.

Archer said that like Betty, Iso will prove to be a big asset to the police department.

Iso is trained in narcotics detection, tracking people and performing other patrol duties.

He can track suspects who try to run from law enforcement, but he can also serve the community by searching for a person who is lost.

Iso was born in Czechoslovakia, so all of his commands are in the Czech language. He knows about 10 commands.

Archer likes the dog’s commands being in a foreign language, because most people here will not know how to give orders to the dog.

He said that Iso is available to other departments if they need to use the dog.

But it’s a package deal: Archer is the dog’s only handler, so he and Iso always work together.

Iso lives with Archer and his family and is learning to be friends with Archer’s two pet dogs.