Long Beach Police Dog Ozzy Found Dead in Patrol Car

On Wednesday August 14th at 3:40 p.m., Long Beach Police K-9 Ozzy was located deceased by his handler. The department immediately initiated a bureau review into all the equipment, their protocols, and circumstances of the accident.

At the time of his death, Ozzy and his handler were both off-duty and Ozzy was inside the officer’s department issued K-9 vehicle says Arantxa Chavarria Public Information officer for Long Beach Police.

LBPD K-9 vehicles are outfitted with fail/safe equipment that is meant to generate an alert. At this time, they believe this alert may not have been working.

A veterinarian examination of Ozzy and the preliminary results determined the cause of death to be heat related.

Once this review is completed, LBPD will assess this tragic accident and ensure it does not happen again.

LBPD asks that you respect the handler and his family. Our department is mourning Ozzy’s loss as we would with any of our employees, our K-9’s are an indispensable part of our department, and we will continue to view them as partners.

Currently, all of LBPD patrol K-9 handlers are checking their Heat System Controller prior to every shift and will continue to do so as part of their daily protocols.

LBPD announced the death of K-9 Ozzy in an effort to keep you our community informed. However, they want to provide additional clarification, this unfortunate incident was not intentional, preliminary they believe this was an accident and they are taking all the necessary steps to avoid this happening in the future.