Alexandria Police Foundation Donates K9 Protective Vest to French Police

• PHOTO: The Alexandria Police Foundation Tuesday presented French National Police with a K9 protective vest. At a ceremony at the French Embassy are (standing from left): Foundation President Willem Polak, French Embassy Police and Homeland Security Attache Pierre-Edouard Colliex, and Alexandria Police Chief Earl L. Cook, with APD K9 Officer Robert Egan and K9 Czekaj/Photo: Courtesy of Alexandria Police Foundation.

__________________

WASHINGTON, DC -- The Alexandria Police Foundation Tuesday donated a K9 protective vest to French National Police in honor of Diesel, a French police dog killed in anti-terrorism action last year.

In a ceremony at the French Embassy in Washington, D.C., Foundation President Willem Polak and Alexandria Police Chief Earl L. Cook presented the ballistic vest to Pierre-Edouard Colliex, Police and Homeland Security Attache to the Embassy of France.

Diesel, a 7-year-old female Belgian Malinois, was killed Nov. 18, 2015 by a suicide bomber as she entered an apartment in Saint-Denis, a Paris suburb, to check for explosives during the investigation of the Paris shootings by ISIS terrorists.

Diesel, an explosives detection K9, was a member of the French National Police ant-terror unit known as RAID – Recherche (Research), Assistance, Intervention and Dissuasion. Five police officers were also injured. The protective vest was designed and manufactured by Armor Express of Central Lake, Mich.

The Alexandria Police Foundation is a nonprofit charitable organization of Alexandria business owners, community leaders and private citizens founded in 2002 to provide health insurance for retired police Dogs. The Foundation’s mission has evolved and it now provides the Alexandria Police Department with a variety of resources to enhance officer performance, morale and effectiveness in its efforts to safeguard the community