The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office K-9 teams provide specialized law enforcement in a patrol environment by assisting deputies in situations where the safety of officers or the public is at risk.

Our K-9 Unit was established in 1989 with one dog and a deputy handler. It has now grown to four full-time German shepherd K-9 teams. We also have a specially trained narcotics dog who works in the Santa Barbara County Jail.

The teams are stationed in Goleta and Santa Maria. All of our K-9 teams are cross-trained. From narcotic detection to explosives. All teams are on call 24 hours a day seven days a week.

The K-9 teams participate in a regularly scheduled weekly training as well as training while on-duty. K-9 patrol teams are routinely used in various high-risk situations such as building searches, open area searches, human scent tracking, and evidence searches. Our K-9 teams also assist our Special Enforcement Teams with perimeter containments as well as active searches.

Each of our K-9 teams are assigned specialized safety equipment. Our K-9 partners all have a bullet and stab proof vest that they can wear in high-risk situations.

Each K-9 team attends a four-week patrol school, three-week detection school, and a three-week human scent tracking school. All the training is based on the California Police Officer Standard and Training. Each team is evaluated by a P.O.S.T certified evaluator and each team has to certify yearly.