Why are so many dogs shot by the police?

[texanjoker]

This came via a LEO website I subscribe to. While scanning on my phone it looked worth sharing in here since this is always a hot topic. I have no problem sharing LE training that in this great forum. I have not read it all yet, but will do so when on a PC. I imagine this will be an article opposed to the police, but it had a lot of info.

I do disagree with the expert on page 12, although it is a good tool and should be used when possible, I have sprayed many dogs with OC and it doens't always work.

Two different links to the article.

http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001WiL9fGii ... 5h8_jlgg==

http://lineofduty.com/eblast_template/g ... rt-new.pdf

[texanjoker]

Done reading. It brought up some training I received and later passed on to new officers. This applied more to going on somebodys property for an alarm, ect. That is the dogs home and care needs to be taken. Look for the dog bowl, dog signs, dog doors, listen, dog chains, ect. I also hit the fence and whistle before I open a gate, ect. If there is a dog that will get it's attention. One of the stories reminded me of an incident checking a back yard on an alarm and encountering a large dog. You cannot believe how fast one can run and jump a fence vs. harming the dog in it's own yard . If that had been on video we would have looked like keystone cops, but hey, nobody was hurt including the dog. We always had a bean bag shot gun for warrant service because of dogs. They stop the dogs without having to use any lethal force. For the smaller breeds your boot works well to back the dog off. I have sprayed dogs with OC (pepper spray). It worked on some, didn't on others. Funny the owners get ballistic if you even spray the dog but it is much more humane then shooting it.

[cb1000rider]

I've owned large dogs all my life and it always surprises me how many people are afraid of barking dogs, especially large ones.
Most people can't tell an alert bark from an aggressive bark. Many are immediately terrified when a dog starts to move at speed toward them, barking or not. Most dogs, on their territory, will move aggressively, even those where the aggression is a complete front. And to be honest, you can't always tell which ones are barkers and which ones are biters.

I own one of those insurance company "viscous breeds" - a German Shepherd. Some people cross the street to avoid him. Mothers sometimes walk their children around him. If he was dangerous, he wouldn't be in public. And where he might get in trouble (around other dogs), he gets muzzled. My point is, some people fear dogs, rationally, irrationally...

Now factor in that at least in Texas, a dog is property, so you have limited liability if you dispatch that property. This isn't true of every state, but in Texas, unless you've got a show dog or other documented high-value animal, the PD has very little economic liability. See:http://bigstory.ap.org/article/texas-co ... s-cant-sue
A LEO almost certainly has justification for shooting a dog that is moving toward him/her regardless of the actual demeanor of that dog.
My understanding is that some LEOs are trained that moving from non-lethal options (pepper spray) to lethal options takes time and time is something you don't have when being attacked by a person or animal.

Basically, if they are afraid, what do they have to lose? The biggest thing I'd fear as a LEO is what happens if I miss.

[texanjoker]

I've owned large dogs all my life and it always surprises me how many people are afraid of barking dogs, especially large ones.
Most people can't tell an alert bark from an aggressive bark. Many are immediately terrified when a dog starts to move at speed toward them, barking or not. Most dogs, on their territory, will move aggressively, even those where the aggression is a complete front. And to be honest, you can't always tell which ones are barkers and which ones are biters.

I own one of those insurance company "viscous breeds" - a German Shepherd. Some people cross the street to avoid him. Mothers sometimes walk their children around him. If he was dangerous, he wouldn't be in public. And where he might get in trouble (around other dogs), he gets muzzled. My point is, some people fear dogs, rationally, irrationally...

Now factor in that at least in Texas, a dog is property, so you have limited liability if you dispatch that property. This isn't true of every state, but in Texas, unless you've got a show dog or other documented high-value animal, the PD has very little economic liability. See:http://bigstory.ap.org/article/texas-co ... s-cant-sue
A LEO almost certainly has justification for shooting a dog that is moving toward him/her regardless of the actual demeanor of that dog.
My understanding is that some LEOs are trained that moving from non-lethal options (pepper spray) to lethal options takes time and time is something you don't have when being attacked by a person or animal.

Basically, if they are afraid, what do they have to lose? The biggest thing I'd fear as a LEO is what happens if I miss.

Well said . I too pay the extra $ for insurance for my GS. Side note where I was trained, we were trained to transition from our various tools , OC, baton, Weapon, hands, ect in situations that warrant it, going up in force or going back down.

[VMI77]

Basically, if they are afraid, what do they have to lose? The biggest thing I'd fear as a LEO is what happens if I miss.

That's what they have to lose that is quantifiable. What isn't quantifiable is the loss of respect and public support every time they kill someone's pet, especially when that pet is on it's own property and the police are at the wrong address, or they've entered property and killed a dog where the owner has done nothing wrong. People care more about these dog killings than they do SWAT raids on the wrong residence that kill innocent people. Fifteen years years ago I remember the comments following articles about police conduct being largely favorable to police, and many urged people not to come to hasty conclusions. Now there are many very negative comments following such articles, with a majority being critical of the police, and completely dismissive of any suggestion that the police will be held accountable for wrongdoing. Granted, it was on the LA Times site where the majority of commenters were probably Commiefornians, but there were quite a few comments supporting Dorner's actions, indifference, and sometimes even glee at the death of police officers. I don't recall seeing much of that even 10 years ago. Now I'm starting to see indifference like that on Patriot sites. That's not good for anyone. I think the actual cost to the police, to the country, and to our society is incalculable, and if continued, ultimately disastrous.

[anygunanywhere]

Why are there so many cop shoots dog threads?

Anygunanywhere

[Panda]

Why are there so many cop shoots dog threads?

Anygunanywhere

[The Annoyed Man]

An interesting quote from the article:

Police officers shoot thousands of dogs per year, according to former officer Jim Osorio, who is now a specialist at the National Humane Law Enforcement Academy, which provides instruction to police departments. The question is, are there that many “aggressive” dogs? If so, why aren’t we seeing more dog attacks on mail carriers? “Just because a dog barks doesn’t mean it’s an aggressive dog,” says Osorio.

In fact, fewer than 1 percent of U.S. Postal Service workers are bitten by dogs. Unlike most police officers, postal employees are annually shown a two-hour video on canine behavior and given further training on “how to distract dogs with toys, subdue them with voice commands, or, at worst, incapacitate them with Mace,” according to journalist Radley Balko, who has written extensively on this topic.

A mail carrier told Pets Adviser, “I rarely feel scared of the pets that people have. In fact, I really like saying hi to the dogs when they come to greet me. I’m always armed with a Milk Bone and Mace just in case, though.

It sounds like training is the biggest issue. I've said in another post that I suspect that most cops like dogs just as much as the next guy, and would probably rather not feel like they have to shoot a dog they deem "aggressive." It may well be that an "overexposure," if you will, to thug culture and having to deal with it puts some cops into a position of having to fear what a dog might do more than your average citizen fears it. If you work a tough beat full of crack houses with aggressive dogs, then you might begin to have a prejudice against those breeds which are favored by thugs. Also, dogs are very sensitive to the prejudices of their owners. If a gangbanger hates cops and displays hostility to passing patrol cars, the gangbanger's dog is likely to pick up on that and also acquire hostility to men in police uniforms. And it may well also be that once that kind of thinking about those breeds gets ingrained into an individual officer's outlook, and when enough officers are thus effected, it then also starts to become part of the larger LEO culture.......a sort of folklore about dangerous dog breeds......

.....none of which has anything to do with an old border collie or labradoodle tied to someone's front porch who barks a half-greeting/half-warning to an officer who steps into that dog's yard. The dog is a family member. It's his yard, and he's establishing that fact in his doggy-way. The officer has to perform his/her job, but in doing so, he/she should deal with the dog with the same professionalism and courtesy he or she would use in dealing with the dog's owner.....not shoot first and ask questions later. If he fears an attack, he can certainly prepare for the attack, but he should be trained to understand the difference between being bum-rushed by an angry mastiff, and being happily greeted by old waggy-dog.

If training is an issue, perhaps officers can be trained to A) make that distinction between a bad dog and a lazy old mutt; and B) tools for dealing with dog owners, to get them to corral their dogs before the possibility of having to shoot the dog can develop. Given budgetary constraints at every level (it must be the fault of Bush and the republican sequestration) and the need to pay for other kinds of training as well, police agencies might attach a low priority to this kind of training. But, there is no better way to make an enemy for life out of a decent law-abiding family than to randomly shoot their beloved family member because the "threatened" officer lacked the discernment to handle it better. They may just be chattel in the eyes of the law, but they are loved members of the family to their owners, and you don't just shoot one without good justification. (By the way, the Hawthorne officers in that other thread are not at fault. The dog's owner is 100% responsible for his dog's death.)

You want me to show up at city hall protesting any proposed increases in PD funding? Shoot my dog for no reason, and "scared" is not a reason. OTH, my bank keeps dog biscuits in the drive through window, and one of my dog's favorite things is going to the bank. He knows what the word "bank" spoken to him means. It means a ride in dad's car and a biscuit from the nice lady in the glass box. It wouldn't hurt a cop to keep a box of Milkbones in the patrol car. That may not be the universal pacifier, but I'll bet that it could turn some potentially ugly transactions into pretty good ones.

Bottom line is that police work will always be ineffective without the cooperation of the people they work among. One way to ensure a lack of cooperation is to kill without provocation the dogs they love.

[cb1000rider]

What isn't quantifiable is the loss of respect and public support every time they kill someone's pet, especially when that pet is on it's own property and the police are at the wrong address, or they've entered property and killed a dog where the owner has done nothing wrong. People care more about these dog killings than they do SWAT raids on the wrong residence that kill innocent people. Fifteen years years ago I remember the comments following articles about police conduct being largely favorable to police, and many urged people not to come to hasty conclusions. Now there are many very negative comments following such articles, with a majority being critical of the police, and completely dismissive of any suggestion that the police will be held accountable for wrongdoing. Granted, it was on the LA Times site where the majority of commenters were probably Commiefornians, but there were quite a few comments supporting Dorner's actions, indifference, and sometimes even glee at the death of police officers. I don't recall seeing much of that even 10 years ago. Now I'm starting to see indifference like that on Patriot sites. That's not good for anyone. I think the actual cost to the police, to the country, and to our society is incalculable, and if continued, ultimately disastrous.

Right, what they have to lose is in some part intangible. And for many people, not just LEOs, if the down side is something intangible, it's just not that much of a deterrent.

I'm really starting to believe that there is a substantial erosion of our constitutional freedoms in the "interest" of public safety. It could be something like the TSA where giving up the freedom is somewhat voluntary... But more recently and as propagated by recording technology and easily shared media, it seems to be a problem that occurs between some LEO and public interactions.

We're eventually going to have to decide if we can live with another drunk driver on the road in exchange for not being searched. We should be able to decide if the Billions we spend on the TSA and the incalculable loss of productivity is worth the cost of X commercial airline threats being possibly averted, which we leave general aviation almost completely unprotected.

Grr.. I'm getting off topic and kinda ranty today...

[MoJo]

With the number of frequent shootings by police against non-aggressive family dogs, it’s about time we see something being done within the police community. Online magazine Law Enforcement Today has recently published an article warning officers not to shoot loved family dogs.

http://www.lifewithdogs.tv/2013/07/law- ... mily-dogs/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;