14-05-2025
Veteran K-9 bomb-sniffer comes out of retirement to serve with Waynesville PD
May 14—Teco is a handsome devil and a very good boy. But don't let those roughish good looks fool you. The 8-year-old Belgian Malinois/German Shepherd mix is a highly skilled K-9 officer and Waynesville's newest bomb sniffer — only the third in the department's history.
"We hadn't had a bomb dog since we lost K-9 Luke to retirement," said Lt. Billy Benhart of the Waynesville Police Department. K-9 Luke served on the force for the better part of a decade until his retirement in January of last year.
After K-9 Luke's retirement, then-Assistant Police Chief Brandon Gilmore told The Mountaineer that "Everyone knows that we don't get a tremendous amount of calls for service regarding explosives, but the value of what (a bomb sniffing dog and handler) provides to a community is efficiency in searching a location where a threat has been made as well as the feeling of security that a complete and through search has been conducted and everything is safe."
So the department was looking to add another K-9 officer to its ranks — even before last month's Historic Courthouse bomb-threat, when a bomb-sniffing dog had to be brought in from Buncombe County to lend a paw.
To fill the gap permanently, Master Patrol Officer Craig Cimaszewski suggested Teco.
The partners went all the way back to Officer Cimaszewski's days as a police officer in Florida. When Cimaszewski retired from the Tampa Police Department in 2022, Teco was a more experienced dog than anyone else on the force could handle, Cimaszewski explained.
So the TPD gave Teco to Cimaszewski, and the pair traveled up to Western North Carolina to enjoy their retirement. A few years later, Cimaszewski joined the Waynesville Police Department while Teco stayed home. But when the town started casting about for another bomb-sniffer, it just so happened that Cimaszewski had a perfect candidate waiting in the wings.
"The town benefited enormously from having a fully trained dog at no cost to Waynesville," Cimaszewski told The Mountaineer.
That's because buying and training a new dog from scratch could have cost the town over $20,000. By contrast, Teco only had to brush up on some skills he'd lost during retirement (and get certified in the state of North Carolina), at a cost of around $1,200 to the town, Cimaszewski said.
"He was on the street in two weeks," Cimaszewski said of the dog, who is certified in apprehensions and patrol as well as explosives.
Cimaszewski reckons that given his mixed-breed heritage, Teco has four or five years of patrol work and odor detection left in him. That's good news from a taxpayer and a safety standpoint.
As for Teco, he's back doing what he was born to do — and loving every minute.
