The Los Angeles City Council rejected a donation for two police dogs after a city leader raised concerns that the canines were trained by a company that shares its name with a Nazi military hideout used by Adolf Hitler.
City Councilman Bob Blumenfield said he had no problem with the dogs, which were paid for with a nearly $27,000 donation from the Los Angeles Police Foundation, an independent nonprofit group that has long funded equipment for the Los Angeles Police Department and has offered other support to the department. . Blumenfield said his main concern was that the Riverside County company that supplied the animals, Adlerhorst International, shares “the name of the Nazi bunker used by Adolf Hitler during World War II.”
“This company is a company that is glorifying Hitler's bunker, and it is a company that is dealing with German shepherds, of which there is this whole history with the Holocaust,” Blumenfield said. “I don't know what the intention of this company is, but it's actually a creepy name that shouldn't be associated with a company like this. “They've had a lot of time to deal with it and I can't support doing business with a company that is glorifying Hitler's bunker.”
Located in the Bavarian Alps, Adlerhorst, which means “Eagle's Nest” in German, was a bunker complex built to hide Hitler during World War II. The site also served as the Nazi leader's command post in December 1944 and January 1945.
Adlerhorst president Michael Reaver said he did not understand the board's decision and had no intention of changing the company's name.
“We have no affiliation with any Nazis, we're like everyone else, we look back at the Nazis and think it was a horrible period of humanity,” Reaver said in a telephone interview Tuesday.
After searching online, Reaver said, he discovered that today in Germany there are “about a thousand” cafes, sandwich shops and streets named after Adlerhorst.
“In Germany, it's not a name associated with the Nazi Party at all,” he said.
Blumenfield, who represents the western San Fernando Valley, said he could find no meaning beyond the reference to Hitler. After Blumenfield expressed his doubts at Tuesday's council meeting, the issue of the K-9 donation was returned to the public safety committee for further discussion.
Activists and community members have raised questions about Adlerhorst in recent months at Board of Police Commissioners meetings, citing both the problematic name and the violent history of using police dogs against Americans of color.
Jason Reedy, an organizer with the activist group People's City Council and a regular at public meetings, said “it goes beyond the name; the name is pretty deplorable, but it goes back to the history of the ways dogs have been used.” ” like police unleashing dogs on civil rights protesters and American prisoners in Iraq.
Reedy said he hopes the controversy prompts a “deeper dive” into donations made by the Police Foundation.
Some have pointed to a 2021 Vice story about Adlerhorst that reported that Reaver, a pioneering police K-9 trainer, had been sued dozens of times in connection with alleged injuries caused by dogs coming from his facility, one of the most big ones in the country.
Reaver called the article “biased” when asked about it this week.
In March, the commission, a five-member civilian panel that oversees the Los Angeles police, approved a transfer to accept two dogs for the Metropolitan Division's K-9 platoon to replace a pair of dogs that officials said , had been retired due to their age and health. concerns.
When the agreement was reached Tuesday, the commission declined to comment on the criticism of Adlerhorst, but a spokesman for the panel said it would assist the public safety committee “to the best of our ability.”
“We will assist in any way we can with the process,” said spokeswoman Sarah Bell.
According to a series of purchase orders posted on the city's online records portal, the company has sold at least 14 dogs to the Los Angeles Police Department since October 2021. The Police Department did not immediately respond to a request of comments.
Reaver said the company's name comes from a German kennel where his father bought a dog, Cora, in the 1960s. His father, a former electrician and Air Force veteran who was stationed in Germany, began breeding dogs. sports and then began working with law enforcement. Reaver's father launched the business in 1976, and his son said they buy most of their dogs from breeders in Germany, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
“I had no idea of any correlation between German names and any Nazi party,” Reaver said of his father. “Back then there was no History Channel, no Wikipedia information, it just wasn't available to you that it was named after a compound that the Nazis made or that someone had made and that Hitler once used it.”
Adlerhorst, Reaver added, is “the name of a lineage. In Germany, German Shepherd breeders historically had a kennel name, a lineage name, so if you buy a dog named Luke, the dog's full name would be 'Luke of Adlerhorst.'”
“If Adlerhorst were considered something associated with the Nazi Party, that name would not exist in today's Germany,” he said.
Adlerhorst has worked with hundreds of police forces across the country. Reaver said the kennel was responsible for Cairo, the 70-pound Belgian Malinois that accompanied the U.S. Navy SEAL raid that killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in 2011.
Reaver questioned why his company's German name was the subject of backlash.
“No one intends to close the Porsche. Hugo Boss, he is the one who made the SS uniforms, the real Hugo Boss. Volkswagen and all that, they all contributed to the Nazi war efforts,” he said.
Times staff writer David Zahniser and City News Service contributed to this report.
