MIAMI -- A Miami K-9 officer surrendered to police Monday for allegedly starving his police dog to death.

Officer Rondal Brown is charged with cruelty to animals and offenses against a police dog, both third-degree felonies. His attorney said Brown turned himself in at the Miami Police Department.

Dynasty, Brown's 4-year-old bloodhound, weighed 33 pounds when the dog was found dead in her handler's home last year, Miami-Dade County State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said in a statement.

According to investigators, Brown told his supervisor that he found Dynasty dead in her kennel Nov. 30. When the supervisor arrived at Brown's home, the supervisor found the dog's corpse bagged and ready for disposal.

Dynasty's body was transported to the Knowles Animal Clinic, where a veterinarian noticed the dog's sunken eyes and protruding rib cage, investigators said.

According to investigators, the last time Dynasty was brought to the clinic alive, she was in good health and weighed 66 pounds -- twice what she weighed at the time of her death.

The doctors estimated that it would have taken at least a month for Dynasty to reach her physical condition, Rundle said.

A necropsy performed at the animal clinic revealed an open wound on the dog's front paw in which the bone and tendon were visible. The necropsy also revealed that the dog had no body fat or muscle tissue and lacked any food or fecal matter in her intestinal track.

Brown, a 20-year veteran, was relieved of duty while a joint investigation between Internal Affairs and the State Attorney's Office was being conducted.

"These allegations are complete nonsense," Brown's attorney, William Matthewman, said in a statement. "He would never do anything to hurt an animal."

A spokesman for the Miami Police Department said Brown is a "really good guy."

"I don't think you'll find a person in this building that would speak ill of him," Delrish Moss told Local 10 earlier this year. "In fact, the people that speak bad of him aren't the people that have met him, because he's a really, really good guy."