Litter of puppies named after murdered officer finish training

A litter of German Shepherd dogs named after a murdered police officer have finished their police training.

The 'Palmer Litter', born at the Metropolitan Police dog training center in Keston, were named after PC Keith Palmer. PC Palmer was killed while on duty during the Westminster terror attacks in 2017.

PC Palmer's family named the dogs, Barney, Rufus, Ludo, Riggs, Max and Freya.

Today the dogs joined their handlers PC’s Gareth Head, Stu Field, David Perkins, Steven Douglas, Justin Wiseman and Bridget Tottman-Shaw to show off skills learnt during their training.

The siblings were welcomed as fully fledged police dogs by Met Police Commissioner Cressida Dick. They will start work on the streets of London in June. As general purpose police dogs they will spend most of their days tracking human scent, helping to find suspects of crime and locating weapons inlcuding guns and knives.

They will retire when they are around eight years old.

The Commissioner also met some younger pups while she was visting the training school.