Lakewood residents who participate in the Lakewood Police Citizens’ Academy learn how the department carries out its mission to protect and serve. A group of Academy alumni was so moved by the bond they forged with two members of the force that they organized an effort of protection and service of their own.
The LPD members are K9 Atyla and K9 Pablo, the full complement of the department’s K9 unit, and the beneficiaries of a fundraising campaign that funded the purchase of protective vests for the dogs.
Lakewood resident Ben Jackson was among the 2024 Academy cohort and enjoyed the experience so much that he helped to organize an alumni group to, as he put it, “keep the good times going in some way.” After researching how graduates of similar programs organized and meeting with an alumni group in Rocky River, the Lakewood group discussed ways to give back to the police department
Pablo had just joined the force, and the Citizens’ Academy unit about the K9s was among the most popular. “We all met Atyla first, and then we all had a special meeting with Pablo,” Jackson said. “We all wanted to do something to give back, and so it was like, well, let’s do [a] fundraiser. It wasn’t that the city didn’t want to buy vests for the dogs. It was really us saying that we enjoyed the Citizens’ Academy experience. We feel connected to the department, and we wanted to give back.”
Julie Ferrara, the owner of Waggs n’ Whiskers Pet Grooming in Lakewood, set up an online campaign that raised $6,250 for the purchase of two stab- and bullet-proof vests for the dogs. The vests are also rated to have positive buoyancy, though Officer Ray Halas, Atyla’s handler conceded that “we’re probably not going to send him in the water.”
Buildings, though, are another matter, and in 2024, the last year for which the LPD has statistics, Atyla and Pablo were involved in 17 building searches, mostly for people and articles such as weapons, narcotics, keys and clothing that suspects might have thrown. Also included in the dogs’ 125 deployments in 2024 were 25 apprehensions, 11 article searches and four vehicle interdictions. Six guns were seized in these deployments, and more than 500 fentanyl pills.
During his Police Citizens’ Academy presentation, Officer Halas noted that dogs have a sense of smell that is 10 to 100 thousand times more sensitive than that of humans. “Both of these dogs have about 225 million scent receptors in their nose compared to our six million. So they can smell a whole lot better than we can,” Halas said to a rapt audience. “The part of their brain that processes smells is 40% larger than ours. Some of the scents they can smell over a mile away, and it can increase up to 10 miles if the wind conditions are correct. They can smell the adrenaline on a suspect who is running from us.”
The dogs are born with that extraordinary capacity, but other skills must be acquired in the extensive training required for certification as police dogs. Ohio requires dogs and their handlers to complete 16 hours of training a month. Lakewood’s requirements are even more exacting. Halas and Atyla, and Pablo and his handler, Tyler Glancy, train for eight hours a week, more than double the state-mandated requirement.
That comes after the 300 hours of basic training the dogs received at Shallow Creek Kennel in Sharpsville, Pennsylvania before coming to Lakewood. There the dogs learn the commands that are essential to the partnership between dog and handler, and there the handlers learn a bit of a foreign language.
“Dutch, mostly,” Halas said. “All our commands are Dutch. I have a little bit of Czech because Dutch wasn’t working [with Atyla] and I tried Czech and it worked.” Atyla, who came to Lakewood in 2023 was born January 2021 in Czechia in a line of dogs bred for the Czech military. Pablo, who joined the force the following year, was born in the Netherlands. The dogs’ earliest training to obey commands came before they came to the U.S.
Despite their extensive training and remarkable discipline, when the dogs are off duty, they get to be themselves. “Some states require that when you go home, the dog stays in a kennel at the station house. The problem with that is the dog needs to be a dog. So we have them live in our houses with us. They get to be a normal dog while they’re at home.”
“Pablo is probably the happiest dog ever,” Glancy said of his partner. “You’ll see. Pablo comes into the room. He sees a bunch of empty hands, and that means they’re all meant to pet him.”
Sure enough, at the Academy session at which the dogs were introduced, the powerfully built Atyla scanned the room with a concentration that mirrored that of Halas, a wiry, intense veteran of 13 years on the force. Glancy, a beefy man with a ready smile, seemed like a mirror image of his charge, who seemed eager for head scratches and baby talk. The bond between animal and man was hard to miss.
And so it was for the alumni of the Police Citizens’ Academy who developed a bond of their own.
“Oftentimes, I think law enforcement and communities get a little separated,” Jackson said. “The Citizens Academy [helps] citizens learn about the police, but it also helps the police meet people from their community. Police officers are people, and they’re our neighbors, that is important, right?”
And some of them are dogs.
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