Yeah, they're going to be right.
Where would you guys, where would you guys?
Is this on you guys Good?
Where's Rock
Okay?
Good afternoon, everyone.
Thank you for being here with us.
I want to welcome members of the Arnold
family here in attendance today.
Sarah, Cheryl, and daughter Olivia.
Thank you for being here and being
so gracious and giving of your time
and energy over these last several
months as we as a department pay
tribute and homage to Jason's bravery,
dedication and sacrifice.
Also here with me today are my command team,
Deputy Commissioner Ramon Suarez,
Deputy Commissioner Ron Barrett and
Deputy Commissioner Paul Eason,
along with Fire Marshal Oscar
Velez and our accelerant,
our own accelerant detection K9 Imani.
Lastly, but certainly not least,
and the reason we're all
here gathered here today,
I want to welcome Major Clyde Doty,
Western District Commander of the New
York State Park Police, Niagara Falls,
NY, along with his command team,
Lieutenant James Riddle,
Narga's own commander,
Station Sergeant John Perry,
and K9 Handler Michael Kelly.
Kelly.
At this time,
I want to welcome Major Doty to
the podium for his remarks.
Thank you.
Thank you Commissioner.
I'll just start with the story.
What brought us here is on Thursday,
August 24th, the New York State
Park Police purchased a year and
a half full German Shepherd K9 for
the purpose of explosive detection,
patrol tracking and apprehension.
The K9 is assigned to 20 year
veteran officer Michael Kelly,
who's been a K9 handler for
the past nine years.
As we preferred not to use the
name that came with the canine,
we're struggling to find
a fitting name for him.
The next day, Friday morning,
the four of us were sitting around
discussing and throwing out all kinds
of different names for suggestion.
Then out of the blue,
Officer Kelly simply said Arno.
He said after the Buffalo firefighter
Jason Arno, who was killed and
lied and duty this past March.
Everyone just kind of stopped,
looked at each other as a moment of
silence and Officer Kelly just said,
yeah, I like that.
So from there we contacted
Commissioner Ronaldo to seek
approval from Jason's family.
Jason Arnold lost his life selflessly,
serving the public with honor,
bravery, bravery and loyalty.
We look for nothing less from our canine
partners in the performance of their duties.
Just as Jason served his community
here in Western New York,
our new canine team will also serve
Western New York as well as other
areas and venues within New York State.
I would like to thank Commissioner Ronaldo,
members of the Buffalo Fire Department,
and a sincere and heartfelt thank you
to Jason's mother and Missus Arnold,
to Jason's wife Sarah and daughter Olivia
for allowing the New York State Park
Police to have the honor of continuing
the Arno name and serving the public.
At that, I would like to introduce the
newest member of the New York State
Park Police K9 program and officially
named K9 Arnold with his handler,
Officer Michael Kelly.
Thank you Major Dodi.
At this time I'm open the podium
up to questions for anyone from
the New York State Park Police
contingent or anyone else up
here at the podium. Thank you.
He's he's in
service in a sense that he
comes to work every day.
They're in a bonding period right now.
His official training is going
to start September 11th.
He will train 1st and explosive
detection at with the Chicago County
Sheriff's Department and then eventually
once he completes that training,
he'll go on to his patrol tracking
and apprehension training and all.
It'll be roughly 16 weeks of training.
Yes. Yeah. Yeah, he is. He is,
yeah. My name is Mike Kelly,
canine handler for the State Park Police.
Arnold did learn his name very quickly.
Within about 2-3 days he's
been responding to it.
It's just been a week that we've
had him now and he's from hungry.
He's got a great personality.
It sounds like in talking
with the family that you know,
he fits right along the lines of Jason.
So this is, this is a great honor for
us and we hope to put our best in
every day and to make everybody proud.
Yeah, he'll be home with
me. He's in the house now.
We had him, had him create it for a bit,
started barking the other night that he
wanted out and now he is upstairs with us,
so, but he's adjusted really well. So
I think he's just really social,
friendly social dog.
He's including everybody and
that's what we want to see. So,
yeah, sure, sure.
We have a 2nd about the
dog.
OK. Alright. So
this time this concludes our
press conference. Everyone,
thank you so much for attending
and have a great day. Thank you.