On March 22, 2022 Sergeant Kevin Miller, who is also a Washington State Police Canine Association (WSPCA) Master Trainer and Officer Whitney Fairbanks, along with their K9 partners, Bodie the Belgian Malinois and Copper the German Shepherd successfully completed a regional K-9 training update. PAPD K9 facilitates regional K9 training for all the law enforcement agencies in the NW region of the state on a bi-monthly basis.
The training is in a cooperative effort to ensure standardized and advanced K9 training objectives are accomplished. Allied agency supervisors and administrators participate in establishing unified policy and practices for deployment criteria. This ensures practices used are in line with our patrol staffs and the principals are tactically sound. This is especially beneficial to all regional agencies as we can cross-deploy our K9 assets when necessary.
K9 assets are very valuable to support operation divisions in locating violent suspects, evidence, and are relied upon to mitigate searching man-hours and an additional less lethal option. One of the unforeseen benefits from regional K9 training has been the information-sharing component when it comes to suspects committing the same type of crimes in different counties and cities.
