SARASOTA – The Sarasota Police Department is welcoming a new furry friend to its team!
The police department made the announcement on K-9 Kodak’s second birthday Wednesday. Kodak was born in the Czech Republic in 2021, the same year that Officer Gagnon joined the Sarasota Police Department K-9 Unit.
K-9 Kodak, a 2-year-old German Shepherd, and his handler, Officer Paul Gagnon, completed their 640 hours of initial training that included patrol work, tracking, building searches, area searches, article searches, and apprehension.
“The school that we attended is normally about four to six months, they have a state certification that they have to pass and once they pass that we’ll come here and we’ll do additional training in the streets, to get them street ready, to actually go out and be able to do live deployments and stuff like that, it also tests us as handlers, since this is new to us too,” said Sarasota Police Department K-9 handler, Officer Paul Gagnon.
K-9 Kodak enjoys taking long walks on the beach and tracking bad guys at work. He enjoys playing ball and chewing on things that should not be chewed on when he’s off duty.
SPD currently has four dogs and four handlers.
