Dog daze: Patrol’s training regimen cruel and unnecessary
This week's column.
Beating and hanging a dog as preparation for police work is fundamentally wrong.
I say that as someone eminently unqualified to judge how and how not to train dogs for dangerous duty.
I also say it as someone who is eminently unqualified on any level of dog training — who feels fortunate to have cajoled my pooch to sit, stay and roll over and to not do her business where she shouldn’t.
At least most of the time.
But I also know cruelty when I see it. And the grainy, cell-phone video of State Highway Patrol Trooper Charles Jones “training” his dog by kicking it five times while it hangs from a loading dock is cruelty, plain and simple.
The kicks are so forceful that the thuds from their impact are clearly audible. As it turns out, at least some state troopers routinely had used beatings, stun guns and other punishments to discipline and train their dogs.
Jones was suspended, then fired, after pressure from the office of Gov. Mike Easley. The Highway Patrol also shut down its canine program, pending an investigation.
Since then, however, an administrative law judge has recommended that Jones be reinstated. With back pay.
To be fair, Judge Fred Morrison Jr.’s ruling centered more on what he perceived as outside pressure from the governor to fire Jones than Jones’ behavior toward the dog. Even so, some of the trooper’s bosses and colleagues have defended him.
But if abusive behavior toward animals is predictive of abusive behavior toward humans, this is not only outrageous, it’s scary. And sad.
The bond dogs form with their partners seems based more on loyalty than fear.
Images of a burly Malinois named Bear come to mind. During a ride-along with a Greensboro police officer in 2001, I saw Bear track and catch a fleeing robber, pinning the man in the shadows of someone’s backyard in south Greensboro, then dutifully waiting for officers to arrive
.
But, again, what do I know?
So, I spent some time last week with members of the Greensboro Police Department’s K-9 Unit during training exercises at Jaycee Park.
One dog sniffed out a simulated bomb. Another sank his teeth into a burlap sleeve worn by K-9 officer Eddy Summers, and would not let go. Still another tracked and retrieved a hidden pocketknife based strictly on its human scent.
Ironically, the dogs aren’t acting on instincts to kill or to attack. They are acting on what Summers, a 20-year K-9 veteran, described as their “play drive” — the same satisfaction your pup at home might get from gnawing a toy or chasing a tennis ball.
Summers says the dogs tend to respond better to praise and toys rather than negative reinforcement. Yet he concedes that sometimes the dogs are punished with choke collars, pinch collars and even electric collars. But only rarely.
“I can hurt them just as bad by fussin’ with them,” Summers said.
To a man, the Greensboro officers emphasized their relationship to their dogs, whom they treat as partners. In fact, the dogs live with officers when not on duty. “They play with our kids,” Officer J.D. Frazier said. “We spend more time with these dogs than we do with our own families. Not that anyone’s training lapdogs here. Summers said they are looking for very social dogs, who are energetic, playful and, above all, courageous. “Dogs that go toward the gunshots rather than run away.”
Greensboro’s K-9 unit consists of nine officers and 13 dogs. The department’s traffic division deploys three dogs; vice and narcotics, one.
The city’s police dogs typically are deployed 2,000 times a year. Among roles they have played in recent months were bomb sweeps during the visits of presidential candidates Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain, as well as the special state legislative session at N.C. A&T. K-9 Unit dogs were used to search the home of a Guilford County man arrested for threatening to kill City Council members. And they were on-site during a standoff with an armed man holding a hostage in Browns Summit.
Meanwhile, the state Highway Patrol’s canine unit could be reinstated in as soon as two months, but with major reforms. As for Trooper Jones, Gov. Easley still wants him gone, and makes no secret of it.
“If the state has to resort to that level of cruelty to train dogs as demonstrated in the video by Trooper Jones,” Easley said earlier this month in a written statement, “then they will simply not be in the dog business.”
Some people apparently will stand by their belief that painful blows are an acceptable training tactic.
But as the experts say, and Greensboro’s K-9 unit attests, that dog won’t hunt.
Contact Allen Johnson at ajohnson@news-record.com
Comments (1)
To report abuse of the comment feature on this site, please use the feedback form at the bottom of any page.
ME? agree with a liberal, it must be the heat. However the firing of this man was a over kill. Amazing the state of NC was willing to send the the Duke men to prision for 25 years to win election. Then fire a man that kicked a dog. A week off without pay would have been plenty. Off to golf and a baseball game.Have a great day.
Posted on June 30, 2008 5:45 AM