Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/22/a-year-long-investigation-into-the-unaccountable-police-brutality-of-k9-units.html
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Dogs aren’t mentally aware enough to stop after the owner cries whatever version of “sick 'em” the LEOs use. If raised in the manner that 5.0’s are doing, they are lethal weapons, just like guns, nightsticks, knees, and tasers.
Dogs, horses, and military-grade weapons don’t belong in a po-po’s toolbox any more than they belong in mine.
There’s a reason you don’t hear about Michael Vick’s promising NFL career…
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Dogs keep biting, tasers continue to shock, guns keep firing, knees press away precious breaths–until the cop relents.
Dogs are not the problem. Craven cops who believe their lives are more important than those of civilians are the problem. Well, racist cops. And, mean cops. Plus the ones who enjoy it.
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Similarly, I wish there was more talk about drug and bomb sniffing dogs used as tools of oppression. They conveniently “signal” on any black person the officer wishes to harass. Paging Hans; Clever Hans to a white courtesy telephone, please.
Drug and bomb sniffing dogs also routinely fail properly double-blinded tests. We all want to love the helpful doggos, but the evidence that they can accurately smell drugs or explosives is extremely weak and the whole idea is probably not real.
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This. Dogs are most certainly not the problem. Jack-holes who raise them to be violent on command are.
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I think about this every time someone posts a puppy in r/awe for the newest police recruit.
I suppose we really need to start calling that stuff out.
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Using dogs for violence against people is animal abuse.
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US cops are a violent national gang with animal abuse units. If someone who isn’t racist or mean joins a US police force, they’ve still joined a violent national gang with animal abuse units.
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People don’t think about just how intentionally fucked up the police use of dogs and horses is. If you look at it unsentimentally – which they have coldly calculated that you won’t – the only conceivable purpose is to make the police as threatening as vicious animals.
The idea that there’s some benevolent role for police dogs is painfully naïve. Dogs can’t do human jobs, and police forces don’t need to hire outside their species to find violent thugs. The dogs are there because, when they brutalise someone, they can’t be deterred by things like cooperation or innocence or the law, and in the unlikely event of accountability, hey, you can just kill the dog and buy a new one.
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A quick search turned up this article, there are plenty more suggesting they are quite good at detecting drugs:
There can be a clever Hans effect too if you are not careful when training, and dogs can be used as an excuse for a search, but they can also be quite useful.
There is no excuse for training dogs to attack people, though.
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Another check under the “cats rule, dogs drool” column: you won’t see a cat working for the fucking cops.
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The use of dogs as a tool of law enforcement is a problem.
The practice of using dogs to chase down and attack suspects can trace its roots directly to slave patrols in this country.
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another issue is dogs supposedly “alerting” on vehicles containing “drugs.” having watched a lot of Live PD, it seems like an “alert” is whatever the cop wants it to be. i had my car torn completely apart after a drug-sniffing K9 dog “alerted” on it. but i was just a poor kid with a bunch of psychedelic paintings in a car covered with pennies and broken mirror fragments – something the cop surely thought was drug-related.
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Right, just another way cops can evade responsibility for their actions. “I wasn’t profiling, I was just following up on my partner’s signals. I wasn’t using excessive force, I was defending my partner after a fleeing suspect tried to kick him away.”
I love dogs, but they shouldn’t be cops. If there’s any role at all for canines in law enforcement it’s for search and rescue operations.
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There are roles — tracking actual felons, finding lost children, and so forth. But in most cases we are talking about different breeds with a totally different skill set from simply biting.
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This article explains exactly why I’m not fashed with the “augmented reality goggles for dogs” mentioned a few days ago on BB…
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Yeah, I’m tired of all the copaganda in the wholesome subreddits.
It’s disgusting.
“This desk-riding sergeant played a game of pickup hoops with some brown kids” but ignores the fact that he spent 15 years putting kids like that in juvie and prison for having a few crumbs of weed at the bottom of their backpacks. And locking up their dads too.
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But this comes down to the need to defund the police. We are not complaining about dalmations on fire trucks. Very few would have an issue with a rescue service employing blood hounds to locate avalanche survivors. Almost nobody complains about social workers with therapy pugs.
We are talking about police using GSDs as weapons.
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Contrast the PR value of their cute doggie pictures, with their horrific practice of routinely shooting family pets, should a civilian dog object to its owner being menaced… Cops and Trump supporters seem equally immune to irony.
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Of course you would! But only as an informant.
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