Vail Police hoping to add a four-legged officer to the force to sniff out bombs
Chief Ryan Kenney says an explosive detecting dog would save the department time and expense
Chris Dillmann/Vail Daily
When several bomb threats were called into Eagle County schools during September 2024, law enforcement dedicated over 1,000 man-hours during the 10-day period in which the threats were coming in.
Vail Police Chief Ryan Kenney, during a Vail Town Council meeting on Tuesday, said the town had attempted to call in the help of a bomb-sniffing dog at that time but was not able to get one to Eagle County.
So officers spent “the better part of four hours going through, room to room, because we could not get a explosive dog here,” Kenney said.
Meanwhile, “a dog can generally clear a school in under an hour,” he added.
There is currently no bomb-sniffing dog in Eagle County available for officers to use, so when an incident comes up, police usually reach out to dog-handling officers in Jefferson County or Mesa County to use one of their dogs.
Support Local Journalism
“The last two times we have called Jefferson County, they have not responded,” Kenney said. “Not that they don’t want to, they haven’t been able to.”
Officials in Grand Junction have sent explosive-detecting dogs to Eagle County before, but it can take hours for the dog to arrive, Kenney said.
“We normally have a 3 to 4 hour turnaround to get them here, so that generally means that we are doing something else with the suspicious package that we shouldn’t do and to save time,” Kenney said.
As events in Vail continue to grow and become more complicated from a security standpoint, Kenney said a bomb-sniffing dog would be at the top of his wish list in terms of tools the department could use to save time and resources.
“We just continue to have incidents where having a dog that could quickly clear a large area rather than 10 to 15 officers spending hours going through that same area,” Kenney said.
Kenney said before approaching the Vail Town Council, he attempted to secure federal funds to be used to implement a bomb-sniffing dog program.
“As you know, that’s completely fallen apart,” he said.
With the town now working on its budget for 2026, Kenney said he is hopeful that the Town Council will include funding for a four-legged officer to join the force.
“Vail has always led the way with things like this, and I do think we could help some of our partner agencies as well,” he said.
A formal presentation of the town budget is set to be presented Oct. 21, with budget ordinance readings scheduled for Nov. 4 and Nov. 18.
