DUBUQUE, Iowa — November 8, 2026 — Not every police investigation happens on dry land. When evidence or a victim ends up underwater, the Dubuque Police Department calls on its Underwater Search and Recovery Team — a group of officers trained to dive where most investigations cannot go.

The department highlighted the team in a post on November 8, 2026, showing a recent training session and its newest members learning the hands-on work of diver communication and tending. The team trains monthly, and every member learns every role, from the diver in the water to the tender on shore managing the lines.

Officer Doerges, who appears in the department’s video of the training, explains the unit’s purpose plainly: to recover evidence or victims from drowning cases. The work takes the team into the Mississippi River, area lakes, and ponds — places where visibility can vanish and the bottom can shift from sand to silt and tangled trees.

That is why the training looks the way it does. Divers wear full-face masks and stay tethered to lines handled by teammates on shore. A hard-wired diver communications system keeps diver and tender in contact, and the team also practices line-pull signals so they can keep communicating if the electronics fail. In the recent session, filmed at a pond surrounded by autumn trees, divers entered murky green water, practiced surface swims, and surfaced to give the OK hand signal while tenders managed their lines from the bank.

The team is a partnership. It brings together the Dubuque Police Department, the Dubuque County Sheriff’s Office, and Dubuque County Conservation, with officers from city and county agencies training side by side.

The unit has deep roots in the department. Forming a dive team had been a goal of Lt. Dave Haupert and then-Police Chief Mark Dalsing since 2015, and a grant received about three years before 2018 paid for dive equipment to get the team started, the Telegraph Herald reported in August 2018. By that year the team had nine members, including one from the Fire Department, and four newer members had recently earned advanced open-water certifications after classes in Madison, Wisconsin. Even then, the plan was to grow into a multi-agency team — the partnership the department shows off today.

The team has been called on for real recoveries. In November 2025, the Dubuque Underwater Search and Rescue Team assisted at Marquette, Iowa, after a vehicle and boat trailer went into the Mississippi River at the Water Street boat landing, supporting the effort to recover the submerged vehicle and trailer.

It is one of the specialized units available to officers at the Dubuque Police Department, and the department is using the spotlight to recruit. Anyone interested in a career with the department can learn more at http://www.cityofdubuque.org/joindpd.

Watch the department’s video of the training session: Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/reel/1866672298013288/ | Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dfdht8jvdaK/

Sources

• Dubuque Police Department, Facebook