The newest addition to the Somerset Police Department is 18-month-old Aras, a German shepherd from Europe.

Officer Eric Moore recently completed a six-week training course at Southern Ohio Police K9, under the instruction of Dave Johnson. Johnson is a U.S. Army veteran, who serves a canine supervisor for the Brown County, Ohio Sheriff’s Department. Johnson has trained police dogs for police departments throughout Central and Eastern Kentucky. He trained one dog for the Kentucky State Police and three of their handlers to be K9 instructors.

Officer Moore and Aras have been trained in several areas, including: narcotics detection, building search, tracking, article search, criminal apprehension and handler protection.

Once the training was complete, the K9 team obtained two certifications: one from Johnson’s company, the other from the State of Ohio. Currently, Kentucky law does not mandate police dog certifications, but recognizes others states’ certification standards.

Aras is replacing Shadow, a Belgian Malinois, who was retired last year.

Aras will be busy patrolling the streets with Officer Moore, as well as conducting random searches of local schools starting this fall.

Sgt. Jason Griffith has been selected as the K9 unit supervisor.