We've commented before on the unsuitability of dogs being used in law enforcement. This is because dogs' ability to speak and understand English is limited, they don't necessarily share the same value system as humans and their behavior can't be predicted. Nobody knows for sure what a dog, even a well-trained one, will do in any given set of circumstances.
Regularly, all over the country, K-9s bite innocent bystanders and cities then settle with these punctured citizens for large amounts of money. Resisting a police dog attack is no different than resisting an arrest by a police officer. It's illegal. Harming a police dog is the same as harming a human cop. It's a felony.
Yet, in this case, the human, being a cop, won't be arrested for the attempted murder of another cop. The dog was, in fact, taken away and killed by someone else at another location. He was given the death penalty for attacking a fellow cop. If the victim had not been a member of the coercion community the dog would have been petted and given a food treat. The human cop was hospitalized with serious damage to his arms, for which he will be generously compensated, no doubt.
Law enforcement likes to extol the effectiveness of K-9s in searching for burglars in dark buildings or sniffing luggage for drugs. They conveniently forget to mention how dangerous these animals are. The Columbus Police Department, and all other police departments, should give serious consideration to eliminating their dog cops.
After several high-profile incidents that are likely going to result in large payments to innocent victims, St. Paul mayor Melvin Carter has modified department policy for K-9 use and halted dog demonstrations at the Minnesota State Fair.
Law enforcement figures in favor of the use of dogs in police work don't seem to recognize that "suspects", as they term them, can't be legally bitten by dangerous dogs when they haven't been charged with a crime.
Of course, when it comes to K-9 foul-ups, there's always more. The Orange County, CA Sheriff's Dept.'s K-9 force was using a county building in Santa Ana for an exercise on August 29. Dogs were released in the building for a practice search and one dog found a county employee who had not been informed of the search in his office. The dog mangled the man, who was hospitalized and expected to need plastic surgery, as described in this article.
Ex-cop and county supervisor Todd Spitzer said: “I’m simply appalled, as a former police officer who has worked alongside canines for over a decade, that the handlers didn’t clear the building to check for innocent civilians before they released the dogs,” Spitzer said. “The dog is trained to bite. That’s what it does.”
All civilians, the term that law enforcement uses to differentiate themselves from gewhonliche Menschen, are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Dogs don't know or care about this mundane fact. No cooperation by the victim will discourage a dog bite.
The reason that dogs are used for searches is because the heroic police have no desire to expose themselves to danger. They prefer that ignorant, unknowing animals that don't have the intellectual capacity to volunteer for it be used instead. Additionally, law enforcement finds the ability of K-9s to inspire fear to be an advantage in their work. Terrified, and the use of vicious dogs in law enforcement is terror by any definition, suspects are easily subdued. At the same time, dogs don't ordinarily berate these suspects with racial epithets that offend the public, like cops so often do. Instead of being investigated for working over somebody with a night stick or kicking a handcuffed arrestee in the head, the cop passes along the responsibility to an animal whose purpose and training is to hurt people. The dog can't testify to internal affairs about his role in the event.
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