A new officer has just been added to the Logan Township Police Department, but this one has four paws!

Monday was K9 Police Officer Freddy’s first day on the job.

After training for 6-weeks, the one-year-old Belgian Malinois and his handler, Officer Alex Vazquez, are ready to start protecting the community.

“He’s like excited to do the work is the best way I can put it,” Officer Vazquez said. “He did good with the drugs. He did good with obedience. He did good with bites. He did good with everything.”

The K9 is multi-talented. He was trained to do many different tasks like how to search for drugs. He’s also trained to do tracking to find suspects or somebody who’s lost or endangered.

“This K9 is the community’s K9,” Chief Tim Mercer, from the Logan Township Police Department, said. “We will do everything in our power to help make this community a safer place to live and to work in and this dog is certainly going to be a very important component.”    

Chief Mercer said because of how costly Freddy was, it took a lot of support from the community. He told us there’s a lot of thanks to go around to the people who helped make getting a new K9 happen.

Freddy is replacing K9 Police Officer Vilo who had to go into retirement earlier than expected because of a medical problem.

Tune in on Thursday, November 16 at 6 p.m. to see the unbreakable bond Officer Vazquez and Freddy have already made with one another.