SEATTLE — The Puget Sound area is no stranger to seeing K-9 units chase suspects, especially when it comes to the King County Sheriff’s Office.
We often see videos of the highly trained dogs running after or searching for violent suspects, but before they are sent on a task, they go through hundreds of hours of training.
KIRO 7’s Brooke Griffin got an exclusive invitation from the sheriff’s office to see how that training takes place.
KCSO Sgt. Eric Gagnon says the training happens in the pitch-black overnight hours because that is when violent criminals are typically out and about.
There are 13 K-9 teams in the search unit working across King County, most of them on graveyard shifts.
KCSO also has other K-9 teams that sniff out bombs, arson, and even electronics.
In the weekly training, deputies and their dogs go on a search for decoy suspects in places like county supply yards, heavily wooded areas, and even dump sites.
Each week, they test out a different scenario in a different location so the dogs can get practice in as many scenarios as possible before encountering the same situation in the real world.
These are controlled settings with an instructor so the teams can develop their skills in a low-stakes situation.
Sgt. Gagnon says when the dog and deputy are chasing an armed suspect through the woods in the middle of the night, they don’t want the team to second-guess at any point due to a lack of training.
In the first scenario, Brooke and her photojournalist Damien got to watch as Deputy Jacob Fritz and his dog Axel tracked a decoy suspect (another deputy) through a gravel pit in the King County supply yard. They walked through a wooded area for about 100 yards, then the dog sniffed out the hidden deputy.
In the training, the “suspects” wear a bite sleeve or suit, so when the dog is told to practice its bite, nobody gets hurt.
In this case, the deputy was wearing a bite sleeve, but Axel was not instructed to bite.
“This is great training because it builds their portfolio. Like ‘hey, this is a different thing I haven’t seen before’,” Fritz said.
After that example, the full training with all the teams began.
This was set in another part of the supply yard that is full of construction signage, oil drums, abandoned county cars and buses, weather-related equipment, and much more.
The dogs were searching for a “suspect” hidden under a tarp in an old truck parked in the back of the yard.
Instructor Mark Kaufmann gave them a specific real-world simulation.
“The scene is - we have a robbery in progress, the teams come up, we give him an intel update that we spotted two on a camera, one of them ran to the north,” Kaufmann said.
This scenario teaches them to track a suspect safely and efficiently. They are also able to team up with the KCSO drone pilots for these.
“We spend a lot of time developing decision-making and the de-escalation skills of the deputy,” Kaufmann said.
The drone pilots often work hand in hand with the K-9 teams, so the pilots can help look for the missing suspect and mark where they are.
“This allows us to see up ahead of the dog, see if anybody is lying in ambush or posing any threats.”
To keep the K-9 teams safe, we can’t show you the dog finding the “suspect” in the supply yard scenario because it could give away KCSO’s bite and release methods.
Sgt. Gagnon tells us that since 2021, the K-9 teams have been called out about 3,700 times. Out of those, the dogs have received a command to bite a suspect 7.5% of the time.
The national bite limit is capped at 20% of all calls, putting KCSO teams in an elite category of skill and decision-making.
Gagnon said once a unit reaches 20%, they are investigated as to why the dog is biting so many times. If a unit reaches 30% of calls resulting in a bite, then they are shut down until further notice.
“Our goal is for peaceful surrender every time,” Gagnon said.
That way, no matter what the situation is, everyone gets to go home at the end of the night.
©2026 Cox Media Group
