Three years ago, the Justice Department’s
Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) published a report on
The
Problem of Dog-Related Incidents and Encounters. The
report noted that police encounter dogs on a daily basis, that more
than half of Americans consider their pets family members, and that
officers really should develop better familiarity with pooches and
less-shooty responses when coming into contact with our furry
friends.
That report has now been integrated into a larger
portal, hosted at the University of Illinois’ Institute of
Government and Public Affairs. The portal on police and dog
encounters includes instructional videos narrated by Terry Hillard,
retired superintendent of the Chicago Police Department. The videos
offer guidance on assessing canine body language, use of force
considerations, and when police can expect to get their asses sued
after plugging Fido.
That legal considerations video cautions, “On the streets you
patrol, in the homes you enter, with the families you serve and
protect, dogs are a part of the community fabric. And more and
more, the community is watching and judging how police handle their
encounters with dogs.”
It then cuts to a news report about a six-figure cash award to a
family whose dog was killed by police.
“As lawsuits are filed, and awards and damages mount, municipal
legal staffs, police departments, and even officers themselves are
forced to contront this issue.”
An attorney then notes that individual police officers are
personally on the hook for punitive damages.
The video even cautions against insisting that every dog shot is
a pit bull (a
point that comes up with
regularity), since DNA tests can now falsify such claims. “You
have pitbull in your report, but it’s everything but a pitbull. So,
what else could you have made a mistake about?”
Note that COPS isn’t just pushing back against puppycide
incidents. Militarized policing overall is on its radar. A
December 2013 article by senior policy analyst Karl Bickel
frets:
Police chiefs and sheriffs may want to ask themselves—if after
hiring officers in the spirit of adventure, who have been exposed
to action oriented police dramas since their youth, and sending
them to an academy patterned after a military boot camp, then
dressing them in black battle dress uniforms and turning them loose
in a subculture steeped in an “us versus them” outlook toward those
they serve and protect, while prosecuting the war on crime, war on
drugs, and now a war on terrorism—is there any realistic hope of
institutionalizing community policing as an operational
philosophy?
Excellent question. Let’s see if we can get police to back off
on the dog-shooting. Then maybe we can get police departments to
stand down on the armored vehicles and military tactics.
Emphasizing the personal legal and financial consequences of
acting like a day on the job is a first-person-shooter video game
may be an effective tactic.
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