Police shooting dogs

They do it too much. [Link]

Police officers receive extensive training about the use of force when it is applied against humans. But how many departments provide training on dealing with pets? Very few, says the Humane Society. This despite the fact that, according to a Justice Department paper (“The Problem of Dog-Related Incidents and Encounters”), 39 percent of U.S. homes have dogs. More than half of dog owners “consider their dogs family members,” it continues, “and another 45.1 percent view them as companions or pets....”
Do we really need systematic training to combat a few isolated incidents, however unfortunate? The question rests on a false premise. Civil-liberties writer Radley Balko notes that over a nine-year period Milwaukee officers killed 434 dogs – about one every eight days. And that’s just one city. Across the country, according to Justice, “the majority of [police] shooting incidents involve animals, most frequently dogs.”
But surely those shootings occur because the animals themselves pose a serious threat, right? Nope. The Justice Department says not only that “dogs are seldom dangerous” but that even when they are, “the overwhelming majority of dog bites are minor, causing either no injury at all or injuries so minor that no medical care is required.” As Balko writes, “If dangerous dogs are so common, one would expect to find frequent reports of vicious attacks on meter readers, postal workers, firemen, and delivery workers. But according to a spokesman from the United States Postal Service, serious dog attacks on mail carriers are vanishingly rare.”
Yet serious – deadly – attacks against dogs are all too common. They shouldn’t be. And the solutions are obvious: Departmental policies, backed by state law, should require police officers to use lethal force against companion animals only as a last resort. Officers should receive training in safe and non-lethal methods of animal control – and in dog behavior: “An approaching dog is almost always friendly,” according to the Justice Department; “a dog who feels threatened will usually try to keep his distance.”

Radley Balko documents this problem in greater detail in his important new book, Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces. As he points out, dog shootings are part of a broader pattern of police using increasingly aggressive military-style tactics against people as well as pets, even when the circumstances don’t even come close to justifying it. He also notes that many police departments never punish officers who wrongfully shoot dogs even in the most egregious cases, such as this one.

Balko and Hinkle recommend improved training for police, similar to that which postal workers get. As Balko points out, US Postal Service employees often encounter dogs, but virtually always avoid injuries without resorting to violence against the animals. Such training should be coupled with serious sanctions for officers who shoot dogs without good cause. Ideally, they should be subject to criminal and civil penalties comparable to those imposed on civilians who shoot pets without justification. After all, it is reasonable to expect trained police officers to exercise better judgment and self-control than ordinary citizens when it comes to the use of force. People who can’t even live up to the same standards expected of civilians probably should not be police officers in the first place.