Story by Heidi Dahms Foster. Photos by Amanda Hurtt and Prescott Police Department.
Prescott Police Department K9s have been doing a stellar job taking drugs off the city’s streets. The two-K9 unit, comprised of K9s Cooper and Benny, both yellow Labradors and single purpose narcotics dogs, is headed up by Sgt. Jack Shapiro.
Cooper has been handled by longtime K9 Officer Kyle Alltop since 2020. Prior to joining Prescott PD, Alltop spent 10 and a half years in the military, eight of them as an E-5 Staff Sergeant with the U.S. Air Force working dog program.
Alltop started his service with Prescott in 2017, and was eager to join the K9 unit, but when the first testing opportunity became available, he was just six weeks shy of the required length of service. Finally, a prior handler switched units, and Kyle tested and was hired for the job. He traveled to Washington in 2020, where he met and returned home with Cooper, then just two years old. He was purchased from Pacific Coast K9s, and paid for by a generous anonymous donor.
Officer Troy Crawford handles Benny, and is the dog’s second handler. Crawford started with the Prescott PD in 2013 as a recruit, then worked in patrol and as a Field Training Officer. He also serves on the department’s SWAT team. He applied in 2021 to be a K9 handler, and received his training in house and with other area agencies such as Prescott Valley and Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office.
Shapiro said both dogs are “super friendly and super hyper.” Benny particularly enjoys a game of tug-of-war. While they don’t visit the Police Department offices often, as they must be ready to work, when they do show up, they’re showered with attention. They’re also photogenic, great ambassadors for the Prescott K9 program.
Both Crawford and Alltop regularly attend training in K9 first aid, legal issues and other scenarios unique to their service. Their patrol is generally within the City and assisting other agencies as needed in the county. The K9s are new enough to narcotics that they were not trained on the odor of marijuana, so legalization has not been a problem for the department. Occasionally, the teams will assist Yavapai County Sheriff’s deputies in drug interdiction patrols on Interstate 17.
“That’s not our jurisdiction,” Shapiro said, “but we’ll go and play with them sometimes. Most of our work with local agencies, local drug busts, and callouts during traffic stops (when there is suspicion of drugs in a vehicle).
Officers are trained to observe behaviors that may indicate drugs. Shapiro said those can be as simple people driving by an officer and studiously looking in the other, which is quite common. “It’s natural avoidance,” he said.
During a traffic stop, the driver or passengers sometimes cannot keep their stories straight. “We just ask questions, and one person says one thing and the other says another,” Shapiro said. “But we cannot just stop a vehicle for no reason. There has to be a violation to make the stop, then we look for other behaviors as well. We’ll have some reasonable suspicion before we run the dog.”
Shapiro said officers are finding more of the deadly drug Fentanyl now than ever before, and officers see several overdoses each week. Administering Narcan to combat the drug can often save someone’s life, if officers can get there quickly enough.
Benny and Cooper are expert at locating Fentanyl. They are imprinted on the odor during training, and rewarded each time they indicate the drug. It’s all a big game to the playful K9s, but serious to officers.
Just a few of the K9s’ busts this year show the two K9 teams’ skill in taking a large amount of Fentanyl pills and other drugs off the streets, and shutting down some dealers, undoubtedly saving an unknown number of lives.
In April, detectives learned about a substantial Fentanyl supplier in Prescott. Prescott K9 officers stopped the dealer’s vehicle and a dog alerted in an air sniff. After a search, 3,000 Fentanyl pills were found, and the dealer was taken into custody.
In June, a Prescott Police officer conducted a traffic stop on a Dewey resident. During the stop the officer noticed that the driver was acting in an excessively nervous manner. The officer deployed a K9 around her vehicle, which resulted in the finding of approximately 200 fentanyl pills in a backpack and more in her shoe. Deputies later secured cause for a warrant to search the driver’s residence. During that search, officers found an 18-month-old child asleep in a room with a pound of meth and more than 500 Fentanyl pills. Two people were taken into custody.
Multiple traffic stops in October by Officer Crawford and Benny resulted in finds of more than 200 fentanyl pills and 10 grams of methamphetamine.
In addition to their narcotics work, the K9 teams participate in public education, showing their talents at the Arizona Law Enforcement Canine Association (ALECA) demonstration in July, visits with local veterans and school children, and local fundraisers, among others.
Hard working dogs need a highly nutritious diet, and Cooper and Benny eat OCRaw, a packaged raw food donated by PreskittPawznClawz.
Sgt. Shapiro is careful to thank the community donors who make the county’s K9 programs possible. All area K9 teams are funded by donations and grants, and for several years, generous donors have made the purchase of new dogs, training, veterinary care, and food.
If you would like to donate to the Prescott K9 Unit, visit the Prescott Police Foundation at prescottpolicefoundation.org. Follow the Prescott K9 unit’s great work on Facebook at Prescott Police K9 Unit.
