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.
. 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.
. 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.