Pasco police dog Hapo dies unexpectedly after 7-year career
A Pasco police dog died unexpectedly Wednesday morning.
K9 Hapo was about 9 years old and died from natural causes, police said.
He was 2 when he joined the force in 2013. Originally named Jordan, officials gave him a new name in gratitude for a $12,000 donation from HAPO Community Credit Union.
He initially worked with Officer Bob Harris on tracking suspects, searching buildings and helping to make arrests.
When Harris became the school resource officer for Ochoa Middle School, veteran Officer Jason Griffin became Hapo’s newest partner. The dog trained in detecting several kinds of illegal drugs last year.
The most recent social media posts about Hapo was earlier this month when he spent a busy work week finding drugs in cars across the Tri-Cities.
“Although K9 Hapo was about 9 years old and had an almost 7-year career with us, it is still a shock and we had been hoping for another year on the road before he retired,” police said.
This is the second police dog the city has lost in the past year. K9 Lemon died in December weeks after retiring.
The 10-year-old police dog had health issues since September when he needed emergency surgery for a medical condition called a stomach flip, that caused his intestines to twist into a deadly knot.
After the dog’s death, the Pasco Police Foundation created the K9 Officer Lemon Memorial Fund to support police dogs and their trainers.
Police officials are planning to bring in two new dogs in the next couple of months, and a replacement for Hapo is expected for come sometime later in the year.
Presently, they have one dog working on patrol, Jucon, and one drug-detection dog, Ezra.
This story was originally published March 4, 2020 at 11:42 AM.