The Michigan City Police Department held a presentation with a special announcement during its meeting on Wednesday, February 14. The department is welcoming Freya as its newest member to the team. Freya is a therapy dog who will help benefit the department in situations to provide comfort for people.
“The therapy dog is going to be able to assist our main Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) officers,” Michigan City Police Department Police Chief Marty Corley said. “She’s going to be assigned to Officer Kane Fletcher to help out at scenes where there needs to be comfort, presentations in the community and to track lost juveniles or dementia patients.”
One notable difference between Freya and other canine apprehension dogs is that she doesn’t bite as a response to her tracking. She will approach someone in a non-aggressive manner and serve to build trust.
It shouldn’t take long before Freya becomes very popular with the Crisis Intervention Team. Corley discusses how their CIT officers are prepared to manage these difficult situations.
“Our Crisis Intervention officers are given the resources and tools to help people out,” Corley said. “A large amount of the calls we get are people going through mental health issues or some type of trauma. The officers are equipped to resolve these incidents and help people get treatment they might need.”
La Porte County is the first to have this program partnership with funding that works to support mental health. With a recent addition of officers to the Crisis Intervention Team, Corley believes this will only make life easier for the department to ensure they can handle any issue.
“We just recently graduated nine officers, so now we have 21 total in our department who are CIT trained,” Corley said. “They know where to refer people and how to get them help and it makes them feel more confident. I think that will spill over to showing our recidivism is down, our referrals are adequately placed, and it will expand to other counties as well. Mental health is a very important issue that we have to deal with in this country daily.”
Eternal K9 partnered with the Michigan City Police Department in the donation of Freya.
“We’re thankful for all of the Michigan City officers,” Molly Jeszenszky, owner of Eternal K9, said. “Officer Kane Fletcher has been super committed to the dog already. We’re very excited to get started with the training. I grew up in Michigan City and this is home, so we appreciate the opportunity of allowing us to get our foot in the door here.”
Jeszenszky noted that there will be updates available on Eternal K9’s social media pages to follow Freya along in her journey.
Corley also noted there were three awards that transpired in 2023 that were given to members of the Michigan City Police Department. Kyle Shiparski was named the Michigan City Exchange Club Officer of the Year, Maximiliano Hernandez was named the Rotary Club Officer of the Year and Daniel Revoir was presented the Chris Smith Award Winner.
The presentation for Revoir’s award was orchestrated during this meeting. He shared what it meant to receive the award that honored Chris Smith, a late officer with the Michigan City Police Department who embodied a fresh spirit with love and dedication to the profession of law enforcement.
“I’m very thankful for this award,” Revoir said. “There are a lot of officers who are deserving of this award as well, so it humbles me a lot to be the recipient this year. We’re a great department with incredible leaders and administration.”
For more information on the Michigan City Police Department, you can visit its website or check out its Facebook page.
