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Kitt wasn’t merely Cushing’s partner: They were best friends-family, even-together 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
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From Quincy to Brockton to Cape Cod, police officials knew to call Cushing and Kitt when they needed a top-notch tracker. In fact, during their time together, he and Kitt had become South Shore legends, earning a police department medal of valor and locating dangerous felons, including fugitives, drug dealers, and rapists too numerous to count. There weren’t many places on the South Shore where the duo hadn’t tracked someone since Kitt joined the force in 2011. They were thick, thorny, and difficult to navigate. He had grown up not far from there, plus those woods had been the site of many police incidents where he and Kitt had tracked assailants in the past. A nearby middle school had already locked down, and the suspect, who was on foot, had fled into the woods behind the massive Braintree Village apartment complex.Ĭushing knew the spot. The dispatcher reported that the suspect possibly had two firearms. Scrambling behind the wheel, Cushing backed out of his driveway and drove toward the scene on McCusker Drive, listening to the radio chatter and speeding up as he heard the action escalate. The dog was raring to go, but instead of speeding ahead, the well-trained canine loped along in lockstep with his partner before leaping into the back seat of Cushing’s police cruiser.
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Then he ran back outside to let Kitt out of his kennel. 45-caliber department-issued SIG Sauer semi-automatic handgun. It was time to go to work.Ĭushing, a 6-foot-tall, dark-haired man with piercing blue eyes, pulled a bulletproof vest over his head, velcroing it tight to his trim, fit chest, and strapped on his utility belt, complete with a taser, mace canister, baton, and. Kitt, an 11-year-old German Shepherd–Belgian Malinois mix, snapped to attention. Cushing hung up and rushed into his house to put on his uniform. When Cushing suddenly heard sirens, though, and his iPhone lit up with the Braintree Police Department number, he knew his day was about to start early.Ī domestic violence call had come in, explained the dispatcher, and the department needed Cushing and Kitt to help find the suspect. on June 4, 2021, and the Braintree police officer thought he could get a workout in before his shift started while Kitt, his police dog for the past decade, slept in his kennel. Bill Cushing and his K-9 partner, Braintree police dog Kitt / Photo by Kevin Wiles Jr.īill Cushing was exercising in his home gym when he got the call.