POLICE BOOKS - Kathy Kat Albrecht

About the UC Santa Cruz Police Department

The University of California, Santa Cruz, opened in 1965 and grew, one college at a time, to its current (2006-07) enrollment of about 15,000 students. Undergraduates pursue 62 majors supervised by divisional deans of humanities, physical & biological sciences, social sciences, and arts. Graduate students work toward graduate certificates, master's degrees, or doctoral degrees in 33 academic fields under the supervision of the divisional and graduate deans. The dean of the Jack Baskin School of Engineering oversees the campus's undergraduate and graduate engineering programs.

Police officers of the UCSC Police Department are duly sworn peace officers under section 830.2(b) of the California Penal Code. The officers of the department are armed and possess the same authority under the law as municipal police officers. UCSC Police Officers patrol the campus 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. They enforce the law, arrest violators, investigate and suppress crime, investigate traffic and bicycle accidents, and provide a full range of services to the community. The UCSC Police Department has police officers responsible for specialized assignments including crime prevention, investigation, bicycle patrol and motorcycle patrol.

Sources:

ucsc.edu/about

/campus_overview.asp

ucsc.edu/police

/about.html

Kathy "Kat" Albrecht was a police officer, field training officer, detective and K9 handler for the University of California at Santa Cruz Police Department. According to her website, “During her ten-year career as a search dog handler, Albrecht and her dogs located physical evidence, missing people, and criminals. In 1996, Albrecht's bloodhound A.J. escaped from his yard and was missing. In her panic, Albrecht brought in another search dog that she used to successfully track down A.J. This is what sparked the idea, "Why not train dogs to track lost pets?" In their first four searches, Albrecht and her search dog Rachel physically located two lost cats and one lost dog. Since 1997, Albrecht has effectively utilized law enforcement techniques and technologies to recover lost pets and has trained several other search dogs and human pet detectives.

In 2001, Albrecht founded Missing Pet Partnership, a national nonprofit organization that is working to research the behavioral patterns of lost pets, educate pet owners in how to properly search for a lost pet, and educate animal shelter staff and volunteers in the science of lost pet behavior. In 2004, Albrecht founded Pet Hunters International, a pet detective academy that will train and certify Missing Animal Response Technicians, Investigators, and MAR search dogs trained to locate lost pets. Kat Albrecht first book is her memoir, The Lost Pet Chronicles: Adventures of a K-9 Cop Turned Pet Detective, explores her transition from police detective to pet detective.