The Los Angeles Metropolis Council has declined a donation for 2 police canine after one metropolis chief raised considerations that the canines have been educated by an organization that shares its identify with a Nazi navy hideout utilized by Adolf Hitler.
Metropolis Councilman Bob Blumenfield mentioned he didn’t have a problem with the canine, which have been paid for with an almost $27,000 donation by the Los Angeles Police Basis, a nonprofit impartial group that has lengthy bankrolled tools for the LAPD and provided different help the division. Blumenfield mentioned his essential concern was that the Riverside County firm that equipped the animals, Adlerhorst Worldwide, shares “the identify of the Nazi bunker utilized by Adolf Hitler throughout World Battle II.’’
“This firm is an organization that’s glorifying Hitler’s bunker, and it’s an organization that’s coping with German shepherds, of which there’s all that historical past with the Holocaust,’’ Blumenfield mentioned. “I don’t know that’s the intent of this firm, however in actuality it’s a creepy identify that shouldn’t actually be related to an organization like this. They’ve had loads of time to take care of it, and I can’t help doing enterprise with an organization that’s glorifying Hitler’s bunker.”
Nestled within the Bavarian Alps, Adlerhorst, which suggests “Eagle’s Nest’’ in German, was a bunker complicated constructed to cover Hitler throughout World Battle II. The situation additionally served because the Nazi chief’s command publish in December 1944 and January 1945.
Adlerhorst’s president, Michael Reaver, mentioned he didn’t perceive the council’s resolution and had no intention of adjusting the corporate’s identify.
“We’ve got no affiliation with any Nazi something, we’re similar to everybody else, we glance again on the Nazis and we think about that to be a horrible interval of mankind,” Reaver mentioned in a cellphone interview Tuesday.
After looking out on-line, Reaver mentioned, he discovered that there are “a few thousand” cafes, sandwich retailers and streets bearing the Adlerhorst identify in Germany at present.
“In Germany, it’s not a reputation that’s related to the Nazi Social gathering by any means,” he mentioned.
Blumenfield, who represents the west San Fernando Valley, mentioned he might discover no different which means past the Hitler reference. After Blumenfield voiced his misgivings on the council assembly Tuesday, the Okay-9 donation concern was despatched again to the general public security committee for additional dialogue.
Activists and neighborhood members have raised questions on Adlerhorst in current months at conferences of the Board of Police Commissioners, citing each the problematic identify and the violent historical past of police canine getting used towards People of coloration.
Jason Reedy, an organizer with the activist group Folks’s Metropolis Council and a daily on the public conferences, mentioned “it goes past the identify — the identify is deplorable sufficient, however it goes again to the historical past of the ways in which canine have been used,” resembling police unleashing canine on civil rights protesters and towards U.S. prisoners in Iraq.
Reedy mentioned he hopes the controversy prompts a “deeper dive” into donations made by the Police Basis.
Some have pointed to a 2021 Vice story about Adlerhorst that reported Reaver, a pioneering police Okay-9 coach, had been sued dozens of occasions associated to alleged accidents attributable to the canine that come from his facility, one of many nation’s largest.
Reaver referred to as the article “biased” when requested about it this week.
In March, the fee, a five-member civilian panel that oversees the LAPD, authorized a transmittal for the acceptance of two canine for Metropolitan Division’s Okay-9 Platoon to exchange a pair of canine who officers mentioned have been retired because of age and well being considerations.
When reached Tuesday, the fee wouldn’t touch upon criticism of Adlerhorst, however a spokesperson for the panel mentioned it could assist the general public security committee “to the most effective of our potential.”
“We’ll help in no matter manner we are able to with the method,” mentioned the spokesperson, Sarah Bell.
In accordance with a sequence of buy orders launched on the town’s on-line data portal, the corporate has bought at the least 14 canine to the LAPD since October 2021. The Police Division didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Reaver mentioned the corporate identify comes from a German kennel the place his father purchased a canine, Cora, within the Nineteen Sixties. His father, a former electrician and Air Pressure veteran who was as soon as stationed in Germany, began breeding sporting canine after which started working with legislation enforcement. The elder Reaver launched the enterprise in 1976, and his son mentioned they purchase most of their canine from breeders in Germany, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
“He had zero thought about any correlation between any German names and any Nazi celebration,” Reaver mentioned of his father. “No Historical past Channel, no Wikipedia info again then, it simply wasn’t at your fingertips that it was named after a compound that Nazis made or anyone had made and Hitler used it as soon as.”
Adlerhorst, Reaver added, is “the identify of a bloodline. In Germany, breeders of German shepherds traditionally would have a kennel identify, a bloodline identify, so should you purchase a canine named Luke the canine’s full identify could be ‘Luke from Adlerhorst.’”
“If Adlerhorst was thought-about with one thing related to the Nazi Social gathering, that identify wouldn’t exist in modern-day Germany in any respect,” he mentioned.
Adlerhorst has labored with a whole bunch of police forces nationwide. Reaver mentioned the kennel was answerable for Cairo, the 70-pound Belgian Malinois that accompanied the U.S. Navy SEAL raid that killed killed Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in 2011.
Reaver questioned why his firm’s German identify was singled out for backlash.
“Nobody’s seeking to shut down the Porsche. Hugo Boss, he’s the one who made the uniforms for the SS, the actual Hugo Boss. Volkswagen and all that, all of them contributed to the warfare efforts of the Nazis,” he mentioned.
Instances workers author David Zahniser and Metropolis Information Service contributed to this report.
