Niko and Officer Paranzino

The Portland Police Department K-9 Unit had its inception in 1990 while working under the Connecticut State Police Resident Trooper Program. The unit started with Officer Scott Cunningham and K-9 "Arrow" and was the first municipal police department K-9 team to be trained while under the Resident Trooper Program.
    Arrow faithfully served the Town of Portland until December of 1996. In December of 1996, Officer Peter Paranzino and K-9 "Caleb" graduated from the training program and continued where Cunningham and Arrow left off. Caleb also faithfully served the Town of Portland until his retirement in 2004. As Caleb was leaning towards retirement, Officer Paranzino began training his soon to be successor, K-9 "Niko." Niko came to the Portland Police Department as an 11-month old out of the country of Slovakia. Because he was so young, this training began with the detection of narcotics. At 16 months old, Niko was certified in narcotics detection by the North American Police Work Dog Association.
    Niko then continued training towards a certification as a patrol dog, which was successfully obtained at about two years of age. Since Niko began serving the Town of Portland, he has had several successful narcotics finds along with the usual duties of protecting Officer Paranzino. Niko has also been successful in "tracking" and has "gotten his man" on many occasions.
    Niko is a very friendly dog and loves to show off in front of his fans at area demonstrations. The K-9 team has also become an important link in the safety and security of our local students as schools are randomly searched for narcotics with the complete support of our schools' administrators and the Board of Education.

Lightning and Officer Bond

In the fall of 2006, the Town of Portland Police Department decided to expand its K-9 Unit with the addition of a passive alert narcotics detection dog. Lightning is a three year old yellow lab who is trained in narcotics detection. Lightning was donated to the Portland Police Department through a Connecticut based lab rescue organization in 2006. He was trained by Off. Bond, Off Paranzino, and Doug Humphries of the Penney Harris Foundation, to be a passive alert narcotic detection canine. Lightning was certified by the North American Police Work Dog Association in the fall of 2006 to detect marijuana, heroine, and cocaine and since then is responsible for numerous finds which have resulted in arrests.