Bend Police Department offers tail-wagging tally of their K-9s’ accomplishments over the past year

(Update: Adding video, comments from Bend Police)

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- Year-end stats recently released by the Bend Police Department show their K-9 officers were deployed nearly 250 time in 2023.

The department currently has four police dogs: Billy, Buck, Harry, and Bonnie. 

"K-9's can be very convincing," Sheila Miller, Bend Police's communications manager, said during a demonstration on Tuesday. "You may be willing to fight with a cop, but you're less likely to want to fight with a dog who might bite you."

 Drug detection K-9 Bonnie assisted in 30 arrests, found four firearms, almost $6,000 in cash and more than 5,700 grams of illegal drugs. The others -- Billy, Buck and Harry-- are apprehension K9s, used for tracking and detaining subjects. 

Harry is a German shepherd from Slovakia who demonstrated his skills for us on Tuesday.

His partner, Officer Leigh Anne Boileau, said, "He's able to track humans, and if necessary, bite humans. He's just a locating tool, and also a compliance tool. People definitely change their behavior when the apprehension K-9s come out, which has been very effective."

Last year, K-9 Harry was utilized 71 times, had seven captures and found five articles of evidence.

In total, Bend PD used its apprehension dogs 197 times last year.

Boileau said, "We use them a lot for building clearing. So they'll check rooms, and help us find if somebody is hiding inside a small space, or under a bed or in a room. We can use them for tracking outdoors."

 Bend PD trains with other Central Oregon K-9 teams, like the Deschutes County Sheriff's Office and Redmond Police. 

During sessions, which are a minimum of four hours every Wednesday,- they go over obedience training, tracking and bite work, trying to keep conditions as realistic as possible.

Miller said, "A couple of our apprehension dogs wear ballistics vests, and our dogs are, you know, obviously sent into dangerous situations, where people may fight with them. But our dogs are tough, and if they were injured, it was minor last year."

The K-9s are a variety of breeds, along with Harry the German shepherd , there's a German Shepherd Malinois mix, a pure Malinois. Their drug detection dog, Bonnie, is a Springer Spaniel.