From left, Adams Township secretary Jenna Hoehn and Supervisors Russell Ford, Ronald Shemela and David Goodworth deliberate during the board of supervisors meeting on Monday night, Jan. 27. William Pitts/Butler Eagle

ADAMS TWP — The township’s police department has had to put one of its vehicles, a 2020 Ford Explorer, in the garage permanently after discovering it has a serious emissions problem.

“We’ve determined that it puts out an excess of carbon monoxide,” Supervisor Ronald Shemela said during a meeting Monday night, Jan. 27. “We’ve tested it, and we realized that you can’t put a dog or a police officer into that environment.”

Shemela is referring to the vehicle’s primary users, who are Kiko, the department’s K-9 officer, and Jason Gallorenzo, the K-9 handler. The vehicle is specially equipped for K-9 officer use.

According to Shemela, Ford has not offered a solution for the issue, and is “kind of just staying away from the issue and not helping us out.”

“It’s just a tragedy,” Shemela said. “It's good taxpayer money that bought that vehicle. It was equipped for a K-9 unit, and we find out that because of the manufacturer of that vehicle, it's defective.”

There was an item on Monday’s agenda to put the vehicle up for sale, but it was tabled, as the board decided the vehicle could not be sold in its current state. The township has not determined a course of action as to what to do with the vehicle yet.

“We won’t get anything out of it if we sell it,” Shemela said. “You obviously wouldn’t sell it to someone knowing it had a problem.”

“We do not want to just junk the car,” said Supervisor Russell Ford. “We just want proper justice for what we paid for the car.”

However, Shemela says that the police department has taken another one of its vehicles — also a Ford — and equipped it for K-9 use to replace the defective Explorer.