The Winnipeg Police Service K9 Unit

Alsip’s works with the community in a number of unique ways. We help The Winnipeg Police Service K9 Unit to train their team by allowing them access to our location and facilities. For more information on the K9 Unit, visit their website.

From the K9 website:

“The role of the Winnipeg Police Service K-9 Unit is to provide support to operational units in the search for fleeing suspects and in other capacities where K9s can provide unique assistance to police members.

The unit is part of the service’s Special Operations Unit and has grown to ten K-9 teams offering 24-hour coverage seven days a week to the city of Winnipeg.

The K-9 Unit also has a Narcotic Detector Dog, three Explosive Detector Dogs, and several cross-trained narcotic and tactical dogs. Each K-9 team is trained for a particular objective with extensive training prior to any deployment operation. The K-9 teams patrol the city and are called upon to track suspects, search buildings, locate evidence, and find missing persons. However, the majority of our time and training is devoted to the tracking profile.

The WPS K-9 Unit generally uses both Belgian Malinois and German Shepherds as general-purpose dogs. The Malinois in particular is known as a very versatile dog, with high prey drive, and hard work ethic. In fact the United States Secret Service uses this breed exclusively. Labrador retrievers are also used as detector dogs because of their high hunt and play drives.

The unit also has a Quarry Program comprised of 54 members that assist the handlers on the street, in training, as well as raising pups and taking care of the breeding females. We are one of the few municipal police departments in Canada that operates its own in-house breeding program.”