{"id":208799,"date":"2026-06-02T21:28:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T21:28:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/208799\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T21:28:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T21:28:17","slug":"palmer-township-police-announce-passing-of-retired-k9-rio-easton-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/208799\/","title":{"rendered":"Palmer Township Police announce passing of retired K9 Rio | Easton Area"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                        <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image\/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAQAAAADCAQAAAAe\/WZNAAAAEElEQVR42mM8U88ABowYDABAxQPltt5zqAAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==\" alt=\"Palmer Township Police announce passing of retired K9 Rio\" class=\"img-responsive lazyload full blur\" width=\"1538\" height=\"865\" data- data-\/><\/p>\n<p>             <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/6a1f42b6eb455.image.jpg\" alt=\"\" aria-hidden=\"true\" loading=\"lazy\" height=\"112\" width=\"200\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                                    Courtesy of Palmer Township Police Department<\/p>\n<p>PALMER TWP., Pa. &#8211; Palmer Township Police announced the passing of retired K9 \u201cRio\u201d on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>The department says in a Facebook post that Rio loyally served residents, businesses and visitors of Palmer Township from 2013 until his retirement in 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Police say Rio was trained as a dual-purpose dog, in tracking and narcotics.<\/p>\n<p>After retirement, Rio went on to live his remaining years at home with his handler, Officer Billiard and his family. Rio was 15 years old.<\/p>\n<p>                        <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image\/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAQAAAADCAQAAAAe\/WZNAAAAEElEQVR42mM8U88ABowYDABAxQPltt5zqAAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==\" alt=\"Officer Billiard, retired K9 &#x201C;Rio&#x201D;\" class=\"img-responsive lazyload full blur\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\" data- data-\/><\/p>\n<p>             <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/6a1f42606317d.image.jpg\" alt=\"\" aria-hidden=\"true\" loading=\"lazy\" height=\"113\" width=\"200\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                                    Courtesy of Palmer Township Police<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRetired K9 Rio was a loyal and beloved member of the Palmer Township Police family and will be greatly missed,\u201d the post reads.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Courtesy of Palmer Township Police Department PALMER TWP., Pa. &#8211; Palmer Township Police announced the passing of retired&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[91711,153,155,154,91706,91709,91708,33671,91707,91710],"class_list":["post-208799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-animal-obituary","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-k9-rio","tag-narcotics-dog","tag-officer-billiard","tag-palmer-township-police","tag-retired-police-dog","tag-tracking-dog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}