K-9 Rico Passes Away (Video Link) (Photo) - 04/16/26
The Tigard Police Department is sad to share that K-9 Rico passed away recently, after nine years of service to the community.
Rico celebrated his 10th birthday earlier this year, and due to his age, he was expected to retire from police work in July. However, his health took a sudden turn for the worst and he died on Tuesday, April 7.
Rico arrived at the Tigard Police Department in April 2017 as a 15-month-old puppy. He completed 400 hours of training with the Oregon Police Canine Association and worked with two handlers over the course of his career, Officer Rivera (2017-2020) and Officer Suyama (2020-Present).
Over the course of his career, Rico worked nearly 3,000 hours (2,965) searching for criminal suspects, articles of evidence, missing people or in training. He worked on more than 1,000 (1,049) police calls, including 392 tracks, he found 121 articles of evidence, completed 116 building searches and helped capture 114 criminal suspects. In addition to supporting Tigard patrol officers, he also helped on police calls for neighboring agencies throughout his career.
With K-9 Rico’s passing, we now have two K-9s, Cooper and Ranum. As of now, we plan to continue supporting patrol operations with our two K-9s and do not plan on replacing Rico.
His personality, energy, love for playtime, devotion to his handlers and connection with the Tigard community will be deeply missed. A video of K-9 Rico over the years is available here: https://youtu.be/6hHUZgozi7I.
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