KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Kansas City Police Department has 15 K-9 officers. Thanks to a generous donation, each dog will now have a Narcan kit that could potentially save their life.
The donation came from the KCMO Citizen Police Academy Alumni Association. Each kit costs about $75 and can be used on both the human handler and the dog.
"Honestly, we should have had this years ago," said David Ferber, a KCPD K-9 handler. "They use the same drug to treat suspects and criminals that have overdosed, and we've wondered why don't we have this for our dogs because they could overdose."
Narcan is a powerful drug that is capable of rapidly reversing the effects of an overdose from opioids, such as heroin or fentanyl.
"We know about the opioid crisis and how that can affect police dogs since they are sniffing for the drugs and could be exposed," said Jackie Cudahy, president of the KCMO Citizens Police Academy Alumni Association. "We all love dogs so we thought this would be a great thing to do so the officers and their dogs are protected."
The organization said it will continue to collect donations to make sure it can supply the police department with more of these life-saving drugs when needed.
Donations can be made through a GoFundMe page.
