Graham Attwood is a veteran with over three decades of uniform service experience in the United Kingdom (UK). His beginnings were with the UK’s elite Royal Marine Commandos.
Serving in a Commando unit and Helicopter squadron he deployed to the Arctic, Jungle and Desert.
During his police service, he served with Devon and Cornwall police as a patrol officer before specialising as an operational police dog handler in the city of Plymouth.
During his 22-year career with the police dog unit Graham handled two general purpose dogs (GP), drugs detection and explosives search dog.
He completed specialist training with both GP dogs and deployed to numerous armed incidents in support of specialist firearms officers (SWAT).
His specialist detection background started in drugs detection (including currency and firearms), before moving to explosives detection including counter terrorism (CT) searches within his force’s boundaries. He has also completed CT search training delivered by Joint UK police and military search schools.
Graham has competed at police dog trials (competitions) with both of his patrol dogs and has won titles at force and regional levels in the UK, allowing him to qualify for the UK national police dog championships.
Selection for instructor training started early in his career passing selection after 3 years’ service. He has completed both General-purpose instructor and explosives detection dog trainer courses. He has delivered and designed numerous training events for the police and collaborated with military groups including UK special forces.
In 2009 his passion for further development saw him become the first attendee from outside the USA at the narcotics dog trainer course with Randy Hare, at Alpha K9 in Jackson, Mississippi. He has also completed instructor courses with the Scandinavian working dog institute and GrittyK9, both of which were delivered by Tobias Gustavsson (guest speaker at this event).
In 2016, he trained with the US pioneers of electronic storage detection at Connecticut state police, before starting the UK police service’s first digital evidence detection dog (DEDD) programme. Since 2016, Graham has continued developing his own programme as the lead police trainer in UK, hosting domestic and international DEDD events with handlers and instructors from 6 countries, (UK, USA, Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland).
His first DEDD team has now exceeded 1000 search warrants since 2017.
He has worked alongside Military and Law enforcement agencies at Federal, state and local level in the USA, UK, Australia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Graham retired from the police service in 2022 and started his training and consultancy company Precisionk9uk. He now delivers development training, train the trainer and consults as a subject matter expert (SME) in the sourcing, training and deployment of DEDD teams around the world.
