Meet Bella, the four-legged addition to Lake Forest Park Police Department

By: Perris Larson, contributing writer

LAKE FOREST PARK - The North Sound Police Foundation, a foundation that combines donations for Lake Forest Park and Mill Creek police departments, received an incredibly generous, anonymous donation. Trying to determine the best way to put the donation to use, the Lake Forest Park PD decided to rebuild the K-9 Division, a division that had not been active in the department since before 2020.

Photo by Perris Larson

At the beginning of October, Police Chief Mike Harden, also a previous K-9 officer, picked Officer George Coleman to not only head the program, but also retrieve the dog, Bella. Flying all the way to Tarheel Canine Training School in North Carolina, Coleman immediately bonded with Bella as they trained together for over a month. Bella and Coleman were a pack of two in North Carolina, and transitioned to a pack of five when Bella came to Lake Forest Park and became a part of Coleman’s family.

“It is really fun having man's best friend not only home with you, but goes to work with you,” Coleman said.

Bella, only a year old Belgian malinois, is a narcotics K-9. She has been able to go out and detect illegal drugs since the end of November. According to Coleman, the drugs that Bella has been trained to detect consist of heroin, fentanyl, meth and cocaine.

Photo by Perris Larson

Bella is a valuable new asset to the police department, being their one and only narcotics K-9. But she is also a loveable dog that the officers genuinely enjoy having around.

“The by-product of having a dog is just tremendous for the community and internally, having any kind of dog in a work environment relieves stress,” Harden said. “The officers are no different, they’re stressed out when they go on calls, they come back and they’re playing with the dog, and their cortisol levels lower.”

According to Harden, without the generous donation the foundation received, the K-9 Division making a comeback in the Lake Forest Park PD would not have been possible and the department will be forever grateful.

Photo by Perris Larson