The Bridgewater Police Service has a new member — he’s only about two feet tall, but this ‘officer’ will be able to track down thieves and sniff out crime like residents haven’t seen before.
His name is Davis and he is the only full-time canine member of the police force.
“For the last 20 years plus we’ve had the use of a dog through one of our volunteers, our community volunteers, and he’s provided us with the ability to track and do article searches with his wonderful dogs but that just made us realize that we needed a full-time capability,” said Bridgewater Police Chief John Collyer.
Davis is only 14-months old and still in training to be a police service dog. He will work and live with his handler, Const. Morgan Gibson.
WATCH: Dog in Bridgewater police department named after Canadian soldier. Ross Lord reports.
“My new partner Davis is a pretty fantastic German Shepherd, arrived from Slovakia at the end of March and been part of my every day since then,” said Gibson.
“It’s really exciting actually as a police officer knowing that you have that support coming either lost or missing people, people who don’t want to be found, in terms of finding evidence that criminals may have discarded. It’s a really great asset to our community that way.”
Getting Davis into the community wasn’t an easy task — the police force had to raise $20,000 to help pay for the dog’s training.
The name Davis was chosen by Cst. Gibson from a number of submissions that were put forward by students at Bridgewater Elementary School.
It’s a way to honour Cpl. Paul Davis, a Bridgewater man killed a decade ago while serving in Afghanistan.
Cpl. Davis was 28 years old at the time of his death and a married father of two young girls.
READ MORE: ‘We’re never going to forget.’ Silver Cross father remembers son killed in Afghanistan
Davis the dog was officially introduced to the public on Wednesday during at a meet and greet at Bridgewater Elementary School. Jim Davis, father of Paul Davis was on hand for the event.
“It’s quite an emotional day for me and its quite an honour to see a police dog named after my son,” Jim Davis told Global News. “Overwhelmed and lost for words is best to describe it.”
Chief Collyer says the community has been tremendous in the efforts to fundraise. Donations have been collected to not only help pay for the dog’s training, but also to refit a vehicle for the new K9 unit and provide a ballistic K9 body armour protective vest for Davis when he is on duty.
“When something bad happens, whether it’s a missing person, a missing child or a missing senior or if it’s a major crime. This is one of the first tools that will be deployed to solve what that issue is.”
Davis only has a few weeks of training left. He will be officially on the job in July.
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