The Los Angeles City Council rejected a donation of two police dogs because a city leader was concerned the dogs were trained by a company with the same name as a Nazi military hideout used by Adolf Hitler.
City Councilman Bob Blumenfield said he had no problem with the dogs, and the Los Angeles Police Foundation donated nearly $27,000 to pay for the dogs, a nonprofit independent organization that has long has provided equipment funding to the Los Angeles Police Department and other support to the department. Blumenfeld said his main concern is that the Riverside County company that supplies the animals, Adlerhorst International, “has the same name as a Nazi bunker used by Adolf Hitler during World War II.”
“This is a company that glorifies Hitler’s bunkers, and it’s a company that works with German shepherds, and there’s a history of the Holocaust,” Blumenfeld said. “I don’t know that was the intention of this company, but it’s actually a creepy name that shouldn’t be associated with a company like this. They’ve had plenty of time to deal with this and I can’t support going with a company that glorifies The company in Hitler’s bunker did business.
Adlerhorst, located in the Bavarian Alps, means “Eagle’s Nest” in German. It is a bunker complex built to hide Hitler during World War II. The location also served as a command post for Nazi leaders in December 1944 and January 1945.
Adlerhorst President Michael Reaver said he did not understand the committee’s decision and had no intention of changing the company’s name.
“We have no affiliation with any Nazi organization, we’re just like everybody else, we look back on the Nazis and we think it was a terrible time for humanity,” River said in a phone interview Tuesday.
River said that after searching on the Internet, he discovered that there are now “about a thousand” cafes, sandwich shops and streets named after Adlerhorst in Germany.
“In Germany, the name has nothing to do with the Nazi party in any way,” he said.
Blumenfeld, who represents the western San Fernando Valley, said he could find no meaning beyond the reference to Hitler. After Blumenfeld expressed his concerns at Tuesday’s council meeting, the K-9 donation issue was sent back to the Public Safety Committee for further discussion.
Activists and community members have raised questions about Adlerhorst at Board of Police Commissioners meetings in recent months, citing the problematic name and the violent history of police dogs being used against Americans of color. .
Jason Reedy, an organizer with the activist group People’s City Council and a regular attendee of public meetings, said: “It goes beyond the name – which is sad enough, but it goes back to the history of how dogs have been used. Examples include police unleashing dogs on civil rights protesters and American prisoners in Iraq.
Reedy said he hopes the controversy will prompt people to look “deeper” into police foundation donations.
Some pointed to a 2021 Vice magazine story about Adlerhorst, which said Reaver, a groundbreaking police K-9 trainer, was involved in a fatal shooting allegedly caused by a dog from his agency, one of the largest in the United States. Sued dozens of times for injuries.
When asked about the article this week, River called it “biased.”
In March, the board, a five-citizen panel that oversees the Los Angeles Police Department, approved a document allowing the Metropolitan Division K-9 platoon to receive two dogs to replace the dogs that officials said were due to their age and health. Problems and worries for retired dogs.
The committee would not comment on Adlerhorst’s criticism when reached Tuesday, but a spokesman for the group said it would “do whatever we can” to help the Public Safety Committee.
“We will do everything we can to assist in this process,” said spokesperson Sarah Bell.
The company has sold at least 14 dogs to the Los Angeles Police Department since October 2021, according to a series of purchase orders posted on the city’s online records portal.
Reaver said the company’s name comes from the German kennel where his father bought a dog named Cora in the 1960s. His father, an electrician and Air Force veteran who was stationed in Germany, began raising sporting dogs and then began working in law enforcement. Leifer Sr. founded the company in 1976, and his son said they bought most of their dogs from breeders in Germany, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
“He had no idea of any connection between any German name and any Nazi party,” River said of his father. “There was no History Channel, there was no Wikipedia information, it was just not at your fingertips, and it was named after a compound that the Nazis had made or someone had made that Hitler had used.”
River added that Adlerhorst is “a pedigree name. In Germany, German Shepherd breeders historically would have a kennel name, a pedigree name, so if you buy a dog named Luke The dog’s full name will be “Luke from Adlerhorst”.
“If Adlerhorst was thought to be associated with the Nazi Party, then the name simply does not exist in modern Germany,” he said.
Adlerhorst has worked with hundreds of police forces across the country. River said the kennel was responsible for Cairo’s 70-pound Belgian Malinois, who accompanied the U.S. Navy SEALs in the 2011 raid that killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
River questioned why his company’s German name was met with backlash.
“Nobody wanted to shut down Porsche. Hugo Boss, he was the guy who made the uniforms for the SS, the real Hugo Boss. Volkswagen and so on, they all contributed to the Nazi war effort,” he said.
Times staff writer David Zahniser and City Press contributed to this report.
