Veteran officer — and his K9 partner — retire

The Riverhead Police Department has lost another veteran officer to retirement, but this cop took his partner with him.

Police Officer Jack Doscinski and his K9 partner Titan retired without fanfare this weekend — without so much as a woof, really. Doscinski wanted it that way, avoiding the traditional walkout ceremony and salutes.

“I came in quietly and I wanted to go out the same way,” Doscinski said in an interview Friday.

But the 32 years in between were anything but quiet, to listen to Doscinski tell it. He spent nearly 26 of those years as a K9 cop and those were years filled with action and adventure, working with four different dogs. And Doscinski’s got stories to tell about cases he worked — and crimes solved, thanks in part to his K9 partners.

He recalls details of picking up a track at the scene of a crime and having his partner lead him to a perpetrator’s hiding place — like the time a guy his dog tracked ran and hid in a bush, and his barking, snarling partner tracked him there.

“I’ve had talking bushes, but no burning bushes. I’m no Moses,” Doscinski said with a laugh.

“The dog takes any resistance out of the equation,” he said. “They know they cannot negotiate with a police dog.”

Doscinski said working with the dogs was “a blast.” He was named officer of the year twice for big cases he helped break.

One of them was a serial arsonist in Riverhead, who was responsible for a number of fires — one at an old chemical plant in Jamesport, a garage fire on Mill Road and a boat in dry dock. It turned out to be a 17-year-old boy, a kid in ROTC who lived in housing at a local motel. “He used the railroad tracks as his highway,” Doscinski said.

Another was a case involving a number of “ATM crashes,” he said. “They were crashing them with a crow bar,” Doscinski recalled. He saw a pattern, he said. There were “hits happening east to west” and only on weeknights, in the early morning hours, between midnight and 2 a.m.

Acting on a very strong hunch on this particular Thanksgiving night, Doscinski waited with his K9 partner at the incubator in Calverton. And sure enough, the alarm went off at the Sunoco station on Middle Country Road, near 25A. Doscinski and his partner followed a track into the woods behind the gas station and found a car there with one guy in it. The other ran off on foot. He was later arrested upstate.

“Suffolk County PD had a task force going. They couldn’t get him — and I did,” Doscinski said. “I was happy about that. I patterned them.”

The veteran officer has partnered with four dogs over the course of his career as a K9 cop. His current and final K9 partner, Titan, who at 6 1/2 is too old to retrain, is retiring with him. He remembers the other three fondly. Harley, his first dog, was transferred to him from another handler. He was 3 or 4 years old at the time and retired at age 10, but lived out his life at Doscinski’s Riverhead home. His next dog was Gator, who lived till age 8 1/2. Vaki, his third dog, died suddenly after developing a neurological disease from a tick bite. He was also 8 1/2 years old.

Doscinski, 57, said he plans to spend a lot of time at home now. His wife Debbie has a long list “honey-do” list for him, he said with a laugh.

Doscinski, the grandson of a past chief of police in Riverhead, obviously enjoyed his career.

“It’s been long ride,” he said. “At the end of the day, it’s nice to lay down now and know I did my part and feel good,” he said.