It’s nothing wanting a grand prix.
4 NYPD officers and their bomb-sniffing canine companions have been honored for his or her service safeguarding the Paris Olympics at a ceremony on the French consulate in Manhattan Monday afternoon.
Police Officers Rafael De La Cruz and Michael Fenimore and Detectives Nick Valez and Andrew Barron — and their hero canine Davie, Gunner, Rico and Vito — obtained distinctive service awards on the Higher East Facet delegation commemorating their service defending final summer time’s worldwide video games.
The Ok-9 groups have been tasked with patrolling the Paris Video games’ grounds and preserving a nostril out for bombs, consulate reps mentioned.
“The challenges were enormous in Paris last summer to ensure the safety of 15,000 athletes, 45,000 volunteers, and overall, 11 million spectators,” Consul Basic Céderik Fouriscot mentioned to the officers.
“The Paris game went off perfectly, and I want to say that you are an integral part of this success.”
The huge endeavor to host the Olympics required French authorities to name on overseas legislation enforcement.
French authorities’ liaison to the NYPD Police Commander Jean-François Meunier famous the host nation “asked especially for dogs because we didn’t have enough dogs to cover all the Olympic sites.”
The NYPD officers and their canine are specifically educated to find bombs, with Ok-9s assigned the vital responsibility of sniffing out chemical compounds related to explosives.
“We take the odor and tie it to a toy, like a ball, and it’s just repetition. The odor is just different chemical explosives,” mentioned honoree Valez, 52, who has since retired from the pressure — in addition to his Ok-9 Rico.
Absent from the ceremony was Fenimore’s canine, Gunner, who died in February.
Fenimore, who has since moved from the NYPD to the Clarkstown Police Division in Rockland County, mentioned the lack of his four-legged pal deeply affected him.
“He was a perfectly healthy German Shepherd. Got blood cancer and was gone in three months. It’s been brutal. He was my buddy for six years. He was the greatest dog. He was my life,” Fenimore mentioned.
Paris is considered one of 5 abroad posts the NYPD outsources help to, along with London, Madrid, INTERPOL and EUROPOL.
“It’s operational exchange, information sharing. Share best practices and this is done on a daily basis,” Detective Nicolas Gouzien, the NYPD’s liaison to Paris and Monaco mentioned.
“This is a great inflection point in our relationship between NYPD and French law enforcement. This was an opportunity to showcase specialty capabilities that the NYPD has and the whole world was watching our canines protect the games in an incredibly complex threat environment,” Deputy Commissioner Rebecca Weiner mentioned.
“It was a tremendous honor and opportunity for the NYPD.”
