Taking A Bite Out Of Crime Article Review Sample

Police agencies all over the nation use canine units to combat crime. Over 7,0000 police dog programs have been deployed in police agencies around the United States. Police dogs are used in law enforcement for a wide variety of tasks, including the detection of illegal substances, crowd control, suspect search and apprehension, and police protection. Police departments with well-established programs are expanding them, and those that lack canine units are planning to deploy them.
However, the use of canine units in law enforcement has its critics and there have been a number of litigations connected to the use of excessive force and dog bites, though none of these lawsuits have been successful. One of the largest issues has been the policy of “find and bite” or “find and bark,” where the police dog either finds and physically “holds”; that is, bites the suspect, or barks until the police officer reaches the suspect. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has one of the mot successful canine units and prefers the “find and bite” over the “find and bark” approach, because the later has been found to be rather ineffective; but both practices had to be abandoned due to strong public criticism. The most vehement critics of canine units are those who oppose them because they are used mainly against minorities; they argue that suspects in this particular cohort are subjected to more excessive force than are non-minority suspects. This assertion goes against the evidence, which shows that programs with canine units record significantly fewer instances of the use of deadly force when deadly force was justified; suggesting that, overall, a suspect faces lower risk of incurring harm when police dogs are involved. In fact, in 25 years of police dog units, there has been only one fatality involving a police dog, and that occurred under peculiar circumstances. The court’s analysis of excessive force in canine cases is similar to that used in traditional cases where no police dog is involved. In deciding dog-bite cases, courts consider the degree of the crime, degree of threat, and whether the suspect was attempting to flee to avoid arrest, to determine whether excessive force was used.
Not all canine programs are beyond reproach. The canine units deployed by West Palm Beach PD (WPBPD) lend credence to the claims and concerns of critics against the use of police dogs in law enforcement. Poor training and management of police dog handlers has been attributed to the indiscriminate and excessive use of force by WPBPD police officers against even non-criminal suspects. The attitude of the WPBPD police dog handlers was such that they even painted stars on their patrol cars for every bite delivered by their police dogs. It is no surprise that the West Palm Beach PD canine units boasted the highest bite ratios on record; a ratio of over 50% compared to 30% in other programs. To compound the problem, police officers can immunize themselves against lawsuits and not all bites are recorded.
The failed WPBPD program is the exception to the rule but it helps underscore the perils of underfunded programs. There was a clear correlation between the extent of funding of canine units and their performance in the field. What is curious is that even departments with successful canine programs balked at having to pay the price of running the programs, despite the fact that more police dogs translated to fewer police officers in the field, a great savings to any police department that used the program.
Overall I agree with the author that canine units can play a valuable role in law enforcement. My only criticism is that the article provides little statistical evidence on the success of police dog programs. For example, it would be interesting to compare police arrests data before and after the deployment of canine units, as well as data on the use of a deadly weapon when apprehending a suspect, to determine whether the use of canine units has in fact resulted in more arrests and less use of deadly weapons.