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222 South
Warren Street FURTHER INFORMATION: October 12 , 2004 Sheriff's officers demonstrate K-9 and mounted units for DHS Regional School – Passaic Campus students
The Passaic County Sheriff's Office brought two of its K-9 Units and its Mounted Patrol to demonstrate their skills for the special students at the DHS Regional School – Passaic Campus, in Totowa, on the sunny autumn morning of Tuesday, October 5 th . The Motorcycle Patrol was also scheduled to appear but was called away on an emergency. “We are so pleased that our students could become more familiar and comfortable with police and law enforcement officers, and they really loved the animals!” explained Kathy Alpart, Supervisor of Education of the Passaic Campus. “This experiential gathering was part of our curriculum unit on ‘Community'.” About 25 staff members, 65 students, plus seven teenage boys from the North Jersey Developmental Center across the street from the campus enjoyed watching the animals perform. Each animal brought its own officer. The dogs, named Zoe and Lorenzo, were both white Labs, and the horse, named Beau for Beauregarde, was an older gelding used for training. The dogs did bomb sniffing and some therapy work with students. Beau jumped over the school's balance beams and did tricks like galloping and walking backward. The kids were able to go right up to Beau and the dogs. “All the animals were extremely well-trained and receptive to our students,” said Alpart. “In fact, they were very intuitive and automatically went to the kids with the highest levels of disability.” “Both WABC Ch. 7 and WMBC News 63 covered the event, which was very exciting for our students,” said Alpart. “One of the more verbal students, Daris McClary from North Jersey Developmental Center , was interviewed by WMBC News 63. Daris was very excited about being a TV star for a day, and we're waiting to see if his sister in Paterson was able to see the newscast last night.” Staff members taped both newscasts and showed them the next day. All the students enjoyed watching themselves on TV, and pictures of the students will hang in the lobby for awhile before being sent home to families. “This outreach to local resources by our staff is directly in line with our DHS goal of community partnerships,” said Commissioner James M. Davy. “It was obvious that the officers were quite touched by our students, so I suspect we will be doing more projects with them in the future,” said Alpart. ### |
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