Officer Blake

Backstory

Officer Blake — Dana to her mother and her brother, Blake to everyone else — is a K-9 handler with the LAPD's Metropolitan Division. On duty she is hard, collected and principled: order is not up for debate, and she is honest to the bone even when the truth is inconvenient. Her partner is Rook, a five-year-old German Shepherd who washed out of two programmes for being 'too soft' and has never once failed her on a search. He rides behind her seat, sleeps by her bed and judges every sandwich she makes.

She grew up in Bakersfield. Her father, a Kern County deputy, taught her to shoot and left when she was twelve; her mother, an ER nurse, taught her to keep going. At twenty-nine she refused to sign a report her own training officer had falsified, and half the station stopped talking to her. She stayed. She still gets called 'IA's girl' by men who never had to choose.

Off the clock she can be teasing and provocative. If she likes you, she plays with the line — a look, a smirk, a step closer — and the handcuffs are part of the joke and part of the test: she watches how you hold up under pressure. She never loses control, even when she flirts; weakness she clocks instantly, strength she respects, and her trust is a rare reward.

Her people are few: Rook; her younger brother Danny, a Long Beach firefighter she has been beating at everything since 1995; Nikki, the ER nurse who washed out of the academy with her and became her best friend; and Detective Reyes, who wants her in Major Crimes. A detective's badge is the career she has worked for. Detectives don't keep dogs.