Gunnison Police Department's K9 Unit

04/20/2024

Beno is 6 years old today!

03/07/2024

While I work on reports, Beno takes a nap. Makes me jealous.

02/03/2024

Today Beno got to visit the Lake School! He did a little demonstration and we got to talk about what he does for the Police Department. It was a lot of fun and we really appreciate being invited back!

01/23/2024

I'm sorry it's been so long since I've posted anything, but I hope everyone had a good holiday season with family and friends. I thought I would give a quick recap of the year 2023 as it pertains to the Gunnison Police Department's K9 Unit.

The Gunnison Police Department's K9 unit stayed busy in 2023, conducting numerous drug investigations. As many of these investigations are still ongoing, I will not provide specific details. Beno helped with numerous interdiction traffic stops, executing search warrants, or assisting other agencies upon their request.

The good news is that our he**in siezures for 2023 went down. The bad news is that seizures of co***ne, m**hamphetamine, and fentanyl all went up in 2023, in most cases by nearly double what we saw in 2022. The most staggering, in my opinion, was the seizure of more than 2,000 fentanyl pills in 2023.

Also, we saw a huge influx of illegal guns being discovered and seized during our drug investigations. In total we seized 17 illegally possessed guns in 2023 during our drug investigations, which is more than the past three years combined. 14 of these guns were seized during traffic stops. We also discovered numerous firearm replicas that were not seized, but given the information we have received about robberies occurring during drug deals, it is definitely alarming.

I would like to express my appreciation to all those officers and agencies that are committed to removing these deadly drugs from our streets! I also recognize that our ability to effectively do our job is dependent on the cooperation and support of our amazing community. So thank you!

11/30/2023

At approximately 11:25 am, a Cortez Police Department officer initiated a traffic stop on South Broadway. Shots were fired at the officer who was subsequently injured. The suspects fled in their vehicle and were quickly located in the 7500...

11/21/2023

Having a working K9 live with your family presents a lot of challenges. For instance one time I made the mistake a putting a hide in our kitchen, which Beno found without any issues. When I threw his ball to pay him, I threw to high and it went on the counter. Before I could react Beno was on the counter. My wife had a coffe mug collection hanging from the upper cabinets. Beno ran the length of the counter knocking off and breaking most the mugs. He is a tornado with an insane amount of energy and drive, which is what makes him good at his job. That being said there are also perks to having a working K9 live with your family. For instance, 2 legs or four legs, if you're trespassing, we'll know it, just ask the deer. Also, I lost some pliers this last summer after working on the fence. I couldn't find them, but Beno did. Today I was shooting bows with my girls and we had a few arrows deflect and go astray. Usually we can find them, but I had one today, I just couldn't find. I grabbed Beno and sent him to do an article search. He found it! It was in a completely different area after ripping the fletching off and deflecting, but in less than 2 minutes he found and alerted to it. I didn't believe him until I saw it, but It makes me happy to see him succeed. Plus, arrows are to expensive to loose all the time. Life with a working K9 is never boring!

10/20/2023

If you have some time to kill, research drug laced candy. This article is simply one of the more recent ones involving an 18 month old being exposed to m**h laced chocolate. Halloween is coming up! We live in a great community and while I don't think anyone here would intentionally hand out candy laced with drugs, can you really trust that a person high on drugs won't accidentally hand out the wrong things. Especially when you consider the amount of drugs that are being manufactured to look like candy in order to avoid Law Enforcement detection. Ma*****na, m**hamphetamine, and fentanyl are three common examples of this. Also, the cartels do not care who they hurt if it increases their profits. If they can get your middle schooler hooked on drugs without them knowing it, that is a win for them and a devastating loss for us as a community. Have fun...but ... be safe!
If in doubt....rule it out!

Police say a pediatrician at the facility determined the girl had gotten sick after eating a piece of candy, and that tests revealed she had m**h in her system.

09/12/2023

More great training!