Over at Reason Magazine, Radley Balko has a fine article entitled, The Mind of a Police Dog. The subtitle’s a verity: how misconceptions about dogs can lead to abuse of humans.
I’ve written before about use of police dogs. They require careful and consistent handling. Small departments, like one in Edgerton that briefly had a dog, are unsuited to them. In that case, the dog bit both an officer from another department and an office worker.
See, Update 3: On Edgerton, Wisconsin’s Police Dog (Doggone and Dog Gone!) and Small-town Bureaucratic Persistence in Edgerton, Wisconsin.
These dogs are meant to assist officers, and they’re working dogs, not pets, and not ornaments to an official’s pride.
Small departments don’t have the time to manage properly a working dog. Worse, as was true in Edgerton, local officials are often so ignorant and selfishly stubborn that they insist all is well when it manifestly isn’t.
Those with oversight responsibilities have a duty of diligence to review requests from officials. That means more than simply asking, “Do you want this?” and accepting “You betcha, I do” as an answer. Sadly, much citizen oversight involves thinking that supporting leaders is the same as supporting the field and community.
Not always – one could ask an officer and office worker, from Edgerton, who now know, all too well, the difference.