When Echo enters a room of people, she gets right to work. To the untrained human, her work might look like that of any other Labrador retriever: seek out attention and beg for petting.
She might even jump in someone’s lap. But don’t scold her — that’s part of the job.
Echo is specially trained to sniff out stress and help reduce it. She’s an active member of the Fort Worth Police Department’s crisis intervention team, which targets mental health crises and support needs.
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“She was supposed to be a narcotics dog, and now, instead of finding drugs, she gives hugs,” said Sgt. Jacob Hopson, who leads the team.
Echo’s primary role is to support Fort Worth police officers, particularly after they respond to crises that may be traumatic. In three years of service, she’s been deployed nearly 100 times to soothe officers after police-involved shootings, medical emergency calls, sexual assault incidents, child protective services calls and the aftermath of domestic disturbances involving children.
Her work earned her recognition in 52 Faces of Community, Fort Worth Report’s weekly series highlighting unsung heroes.
Echo plays and cuddles with officers to improve their mental and emotional health so they can perform their best physically, Hopson said.
Her duties are grounded in science, not just cuteness.
Echo uses her nose to smell high levels of cortisol and provides stress relief for police officers and victims of trauma on Dec. 11, 2025. (Maria Crane | Fort Worth Report/CatchLight Local/Report for America)
The 5-year-old uses her round black nose to detect pheromones and identify high levels of cortisol, commonly known as the “stress hormone.” Then, she uses her big brown eyes, wagging tail and sweet personality to make officers feel better.
“Echo’s big thing is: She’s a hugger. She will physically wrap her arms around you, nestle her nose in your armpit,” said Officer Autumn Branham, Echo’s handler. “She just wants to be like, as close to a human as possible.”
In addition to supporting officers, Echo is often deployed to help victims cope with trauma or to interact with the community. In three years, she has helped almost 6,000 citizens during mental health follow-ups after traumatic incidents or at neighborhood events to meet residents, Hopson said.
Recently, Echo’s job expanded to include working with the department’s missing persons unit to help track missing people, often elderly or disabled. That added responsibility came with more training to support or detain missing people while officers catch up to her tracking.
In total, the pup completed nearly 100 training hours including tests to teach her patience and desensitize her to chaos, such as sitting and staying in a smoke-filled room and practicing restraint around an unmonitored plate of bacon.
Echo joined the police department in 2022, after the pandemic derailed her intended career path of sniffing out narcotics for a small police department in California. Instead, Echo’s trainer at K9’s for Freedom & Independence, a Texas-based nonprofit that trains dogs to work for first responder agencies, offered her to the Fort Worth Police Department and switched her training to crisis response.
Echo, who works for the Fort Worth Police Department and is trained for crisis response, strikes a pose Dec. 11, 2025. (Maria Crane | Fort Worth Report/CatchLight Local/Report for America)
Echo became the team’s second canine, in addition to Wookie, a Catahoula leopard mix who joined the department in 2020 and trained through the same nonprofit.
Costs to cover their work and care are privately funded, Hopson said, primarily through the Jane & John Justin Foundation, a Fort Worth philanthropy that funds health and human services.
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It’s uncommon for a municipal police department to have a canine unit specifically dedicated to mental health wellness, he added.
From Hopson’s estimation, Fort Worth’s is one of few in Texas — and possibly the largest in the country as it prepares to soon welcome a third canine. Echo’s role makes Fort Worth an outlier but supports a culture that police departments across the country seek to encourage: “to let officers know that it’s OK to not be OK.”
It’s been a “rollercoaster” to get officers accustomed to Echo’s presence and willing to seek her help, Hopson said. Breaking down the stigma often associated with seeking mental health assistance — particularly in a police department — is an ongoing effort, but it helps that Echo is hard to say no to.
Echo supports Fort Worth police staff by accepting cuddles Dec. 11, 2025. (Maria Crane | Fort Worth Report/CatchLight Local/Report for America)
When Branham tells her “Go visit,” Echo knows to find the person with the highest cortisol in a room and focus attention on them. Sometimes, she has to demand head scratches from the more stubborn officers, but luckily, she’s persistent. Signs of stress visibly reduce, Hopson said.
“They don’t even know that Echo is working on them. They just look at it like, ‘I’m just petting a dog.’ But it’s lowering that ‘fight or flight’ syndrome, bringing them back to a baseline, a normal baseline.”
Fort Worth Police Sgt. Jacob Hopson
Branham said she understands when officers can’t find the words to talk about their feelings. With Echo, they don’t have to.
“The biggest reward is seeing that deep sigh,” Branham said. “People are petting her, and you hear it. And then you’re like, OK, you see that the science is working, and words aren’t even needed.”
Various badges are featured on Echo’s Fort Worth Police Department uniform on Dec. 11, 2025. Echo works with the Crisis Intervention Team. (Maria Crane | Fort Worth Report/CatchLight Local/Report for America)
Cecilia Lenzen is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at cecilia.lenzen@fortworthreport.org.
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