FREMONT – The Fremont Police Department has added a new officer to their team.

Fremont K-9 Rex recently graduated from the academy and joined the Fremont Police Department under the supervision of his handler Fremont Deputy Marshall, Travis Smoker.

Rex is a one-year-old German shepherd from the Allen County Sheriff’s Department’s K9 Program where he and Officer Smoker were both trained.

For 15 weeks Rex trained to be a full-patrol K-9 before graduating on June 9 from the academy.

The Allen County Sheriff’s Department’s website said, “In addition to training K-9 general utility teams, the academy has also trained specialty K-9s such as narcotics and explosives detection dogs, and School Resource Canine teams.”

Fremont Town Marshall Joe Patterson said, “we had been talking about (getting a K-9) for a while, but we thought it would be at least a year until the opportunity fell into our laps.”

The Fremont Police Department currently has three full-time officers, three part-time officers and their newest officer Rex.