PORT ANGELES — The Port Angeles Police Department is getting closer to having 24/7 coverage with its K9 program.
“Our goal is to have a dog working every day, almost 24 hours a day, but we’re not quite there,” said Officer Whitney Fairbanks, the coordinator of the program. “Four within Port Angeles would get us close to that 24-hour goal.”
In addition to Fairbanks, who works with K9 Copper, the department has Officer Lilliana Emery, who works with K9 Solo, and Officer Kenneth McKnight, who works with K9 Freddy.
“I was selected back in October and just finished up with my dog Freddy last month,” McKnight said. “As a new handler, I’m required to do 400 hours with a dog, and to get certified with the state, I had to go through 200 hours, which included obedience and control work, human scent work and tracking.”
All three dogs are German shepherds, Fairbanks said.
“Historically for patrol dogs, you use a German shepherd, Belgian malinois or Dutch shepherd,” she said. “Those breeds have the agility that we’re looking for, for patrol work. They also have an excellent nose so the patrol dogs are tracking suspects and finding human scents. They’re highly trainable as well.”
Sgt. Kevin Miller founded the K9 program for Port Angeles in the 1990s and inspired McKnight to join it, McKnight said.
“(Miller) was kind of a mentor for me, and he said it was the best job in the world and I should give it a try, so I put my name in the hat for it, and that’s what happened,” McKnight said.
A recent donation to the program from the estate of Evelyn Beckwith allowed for Emery’s dog to be purchased for the department, Fairbanks said. All the dogs for the program have been purchased through donation or by grants, she said. The department funds trainings for the program.
Fairbanks said the dogs usually work for eight or nine years and that they want to work for as long as they can.
“They will work as long as their health and their body will let them,” she said. “They don’t want to retire. The dogs that we’re using as police dogs have very high drives. They make terrible pets. They want to keep working. They live their life getting in a patrol car and seeing their handler get in a patrol car. It would be very upsetting to them to not work.”
The patrol dogs are used to track suspects who have fled the scene of a crime, she said.
“They’re what’s called a force multiplier,” Fairbanks said. “There are a lot of suspects who will see a dog and cooperate because they don’t like the idea of a dog being used to arrest them. Patrol dogs are only used when situations have gone bad.”
The use of the K9s varies based on suspect behavior, she said. Sometimes the department will go a month without a call for a K9, and then other times there will be calls on back-to-back days. Fairbanks said there are at least a dozen deployments a year.
In addition to patrols, the K9s and their officers do demonstrations at schools.
McKnight said the department is very proud of its K9 program.
“We put a lot of hard work into working with our dogs,” he said. “It’s a lot of extra work and requires more time outside of work. The program is funded through donations, and we are really proud to have a community that’s really supportive of what we’re doing.”
________
Reporter Emily Hanson can be reached by email at emily.hanson@peninsuladailynews.com.
Port Angeles Police Officer Whitney Fairbanks does a presentation with her dog Copper on Aug. 5. (Keith Thorpe/Peninsula Daily News)
