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police dogs

19:09 / 07.03.02

last night I saw part of a program about police dog attacks, focused on another maryland county. they showed pictures of the wounds people had incurred from these attacks, and they looked very similar in to the the type and severity of wounds shown in pictures of shark attack bites (a similarity which one of the interviewers commented on). big gaping holes. then they showed an old tape of an actual attack. under seemingly "controlled" conditions. the dog grabbed and held onto the mans leg. the man lay prone on the ground screaming, his arms up. the dog shook his head viciously, then dragged the man. you could tell the dogs teeth were in the mans flesh and not only on his pants. to be honest I couldnt watch it after that.

apparently this part of maryland leads the country in these instances.

is this common? how the fuck does this keep happening? and why dont we know about it? should dogs be used at all, or is this just a case of bad training in this area?

The sundance kid

11:14 / 08.03.02

i was witness to a police dog training in new jersey once and now am constantly aware of K-9 unit cars and such. scary fucking shit. i think its fucking evil to train these beasts to do what they do, but if the cops have evil dogs then i want some too. maybe i can buy some cheap from that awful looking "resident evil" flick.

16:03 / 08.03.02

I definitely think we should police dogs.

(Not as sarcastic as you're thinking.)

My (naive) impression was that K-9 units were primarily used for finding things (drugs, weapons, people), not attacking criminals.

In fact, now that I think of it, I've never heard to this. Is it a US-only thing, or does it go on everywhere? A little alarming really.

Zoom.

Regrettable Juvenilia

16:31 / 08.03.02

Well, police brutality goes on everywhere - why shouldn't it involve police dogs? In this scenario, they're just another instrument of violence.

17:21 / 08.03.02

Perhaps the methods used to train the dogs needs to be investigated. If they act like that, chances are they've been trained to do it and not just to "restrain" suspects.

I remember last year there was the case of some south african policemen who made a video of themselves training dogs by setting them on prisoners.

A few isolated incidents you might maybe expect, but if it's regularly happening, you might think that there was a deliberate policy to get them to savage suspects. It's an easy way to get away with brutality and just blame it on the dog.

17:57 / 08.03.02

well, in the single scene that I saw, they described a "grab and hold" method, where (supposedly) they latch on and dont let go until the suspect is still. but this man was as still as he could be -considering there was a dog tearing its teeth through his flesh- but the dog not only held on but shook him and began to drag him back.

and flyboy, you make a good point - Im just wondering if this happens more often than not. and I think that while no brutality is acceptable or should be ignored or passed off, the severity of these wounds were terrifying. a person can be pulled off of another person, but once a dog latches on....I dont know. Id personally much rather be up against a big guy with a baton than a pissed off dog

and like zoom, I thought they were only used for finding things. not attacks. my ignorance of this worries me as much as anything else

18:17 / 08.03.02

And this is why I'm such an advocate of always carrying a random cat with you at all times. Police dog attacks, hurl cat at it and run. No problem.

Though we certainly wouldn't do that with the cute, bitchy ones.

Zoom.

20:58 / 08.03.02

Dogs are definitely scarier than people. Certainly here, where there aren't so many guns, criminals who won't think twice about having a go at a police officer will run when there's a dog there. (Not that it does them much good.) They're used for the psychological effect as much anything.

Things may be different when the targets are armed, but I guess a dog is a hard target, and they're trained to ignore gunfire and go for the gun arm....

It's unrealistic to expect a dog not to shake and pull at its prey. They're carnivores, that's how they've evolved. Only an extremely well trained dog would be able to avoid that. Given that, the effort should still be made.

A dog's like any other weapon, it should only be used when that level of force is appropriate. We need to be aware of just what level of force a dog will actually deliver, and make sure it's not being used without justification. Indiscriminate use of dogs is like indiscriminate use of spiked batons.

09:49 / 09.03.02

Does anyone remember in Bloody Hell in America when they got rid of the guard dog by feeding it Aniseed buns? jolly roger said "it brakes down their conditioning" or something. Was there anything behind that or was it just bullshit?

[ 09-03-2002: Message edited by: Zebbin ]

[ 09-03-2002: Message edited by: Zebbin ]

Our Lady of The Two Towers

12:32 / 09.03.02

[threadrot] They only use police dogs to attack child molesters, so that's okay... [/threadrot]

Were dogs intended to be used in a 'sic 'im Fido!' capacity or for sniffing stuff out. I would have thought that these days the police would have gone to pepper sprays rather than a life-threatening maul by a psychotic doberman.

09:10 / 10.03.02

I've been watching some videos from the demos in Gothenburg last summer, that show how the dogs, as well as horses, are used for crowd control. Basically, three or four police-dog-pairs half-running against a crowd, with the police lashing out at the crowd like it was a whip. Seriously, scary shit.

I hear this guy got bitten in the face by one of the dogs, didn't see the results myself, but it sounded quite horrifying. Also, the dogs often attacked each other, so the police had to violently pull them apart. Myself, I was arrested in this surrounded school. We were running around in a park, looking for a way out. When "normal" riot cops came over and told me what to do I just laid down on the ground, so they didn't have time to move me, they just hit me a couple of times and left. When the group I was with turned around a corner and stood face to face with two police dog units, we just surrenderd, did whatever they wanted. The dogs were really fucking intimidating.

12:38 / 13.03.02

I know a guy who killed a police dog when it was set on him. The policeman cried.

07:23 / 14.03.02

In Finland, assault on a police dog counts as an assault on a police official. Makes sense, in a way..

But a couple of years ago, a police dog patrol was sent out to bring in a mentally disturbed person from a forest. The relatives of the loony had asked for an ambulance, they sent the police instead. So, the police go in, find the guy with an axe, and sic the dog on him. Loony hits dog, police shoot loony in chest, loony dies, dog dies.

The event makes the news in the following form: Loony assaults police official, police shoot loony. Most people still think the poor guy was actively getting at one of the police with an axe...

Police were let off without even a warning, even though they were in no immediate danger, and approached a person known to have mental health problems in a totally absurd fashion...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:34 / 14.03.02

Sorry, haven't posted on this one yet because I was trying to find the actual refernce, and didn't.
But.
I seem to remember about 18-ish months ago, a thing in the papers about a guy who was training for the dog squad (or whatever they call it) who had apparently kicked a dog to death. Being the doglover I am, I instantly thought "you bastard. You are evil and must die". A couple of days later, there was more in the papers. He'd apparently HAD to kick the dog as part of his training (cos the cops want to get 'em all trained to deal with aggression, apparently), hadn't wanted to do it, had been threatened with sacking, had kicked the dog, which had a heart attack and died.
I actually find myself feeling sorry for the guy. Not as sorry as I feel for the dog, though. Not by a long shot.
If somebody trains an animal to be a weapon, then I pity the animal. (Dogs especially.) Because it's always the dog that gets put down, not the fucker that owned/trained/brought it up. (And I only use "it" for the sake of comprehensibility- anyone who calls MY dog "it" gets a REALLY long lecture on the subject of HER.)
Same goes for meatheads who want a Rottweiler as a status symbol (apart from the fact that using an animal as a status symbol is unbelievably WRONG), and bring it up to be hard, mean and vicious. And then are surprised when it takes some kid's face off. (Believe me, I've met some fucking nice Rotts. They aren't always bastards.)
So, to get vaguely back to the point... I think cops using dogs (and horses too for that matter) is just WRONG.
But that's just me.

13:47 / 14.03.02

The sweetest dogs are always the most vicious ones - they do anything to please their trainers.