NAPS reintroduces K9 unit after nearly a decade
For the first time in almost 10 years, the Nishnawbe Aski Police Service (NAPS) has welcomed a new K9 team to its ranks.
Constable Daniel Birch and his nearly-three-year-old Police Service Dog (PSD) partner, Becks, were officially introduced during a news conference at NAPS headquarters in Thunder Bay on Thursday, January 8.
Birch earned the position through an internal competition in 2025 and completed a 21-week training program before being paired with Becks.
The duo graduated from the OPP-led General Service Dog course on December 5 and were deployed the following day.
Since then, Birch says the pair have “created quite a special bond.”
Becks is trained in a wide range of specialized tasks, including:
- Tracking missing persons
- Detecting drugs and firearms
- Locating evidence
- Criminal apprehension
- Conducting building searches
Birch says that having a service dog “brings a whole different element to the work we do.”
As a Belgian Malamois, Becks has a nose that simply outclasses anything a human can smell, which “allows him to locate people a lot faster than just humans,” the constable explains.
Birch greatly respects his canine companion: “I’ve always had a passion for dogs, and always admired their abilities,” he says.
NAPS first launched a K9 Unit in 2009, but its previous canine member, Pax, retired in 2016.
Terry Armstrong, NAPS Chief of Police, says that the service had to go without a K9 replacement for many years because “as the world knows, we were drastically underfunded at the time.”
He feels that the service would have found a replacement earlier had they been able.
“The chiefs have been asking for years about reinstituting the K9. It was always something we’d hoped to do after the retirement of Pax,” he adds.
NAPS plans to recruit another two canines to their new K9 unit, so that one can be assigned to each of the three regions NAPS polices.
The reintroduction of the unit is expected to strengthen policing services across the 34 Northern communities NAPS serves.
But Armstrong stresses that the K9 unit is not only for NAPS.
“There really aren’t boundaries when it comes to helping people and public safety,” says the police chief. “When other agencies need our help, just as when we lean on them, it’s great to be able to cross-pollinate to help out with those things.”
Birch and Becks have already responded to about 15 service calls, with both NAPS and other police services in the area.
