Police dogs reveal the hidden racial prejudices of the police officers who deploy them.

[Skinner]

Police Dog Bites Black Man
The New Yorker
BY JACK HITT

The Department of Justice’s report on the Ferguson Police Department is full of eye-catching numbers that reveal a culture plagued by significant racism. Statistically significant. For instance, nearly ninety per cent of the people who prompted a “use of force” by the F.P.D. were black. Even among such skewed percentages, there are some standouts. Among cases in which a suspect was bitten by an attack dog and the suspect’s race was recorded, what percentage were black?

A hundred per cent.

(snip)

The starkness of these accounts prompts some questions. Were no white suspects ever subdued with dogs? Were all the white suspects perceived as less dangerous (than a kid playing hookie)? Was this just overt Bull Connor-style racism? Or was there something more subtle going on in these incidents—an unconscious cuing by the dog’s handlers as to whom the animals should attack the most aggressively.

(snip)

Training a dog to smell, say, salamander dung (it’s been done) requires that the trainer teach the animal cues at the beginning of the training. The dog is eventually weaned off its reliance on human signals, but the cues remain the foundation of the learned behavior. Moreover, dogs have been co-evolving with humans for roughly fifteen thousand years, learning to read us. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that a trained dog has a powerful inclination to do what we secretly want them to do.

(snip)

There is a paradox in police-dog work, post-Ferguson. Depending on its training, a dog may or may not be good at alerting us to drugs or bombs. But there is one social ill that all detection dogs, even the poorly trained ones, reveal with searing accuracy: the hidden racial prejudices of the police officers who deploy them.

More: http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/police-dog-bites-black-man

[In_The_Wind]

1. I'm not surprised at all.

[cwydro]

2. Dogs certainly want to please those to whom they are closest.

Not at all surprised they would pick up on the owner/handler's prejudice.

[Fred Sanders]

3. The Gestapo were more humane with use of German Sheppards, it could be argued:

'Police Dog Bites Black Man' | New Yorker.........is the headline.

"There is little nuance in the incidents described in the report; the police simply sicced their dogs on unarmed black males. According to the F.P.D’s own guidelines, handlers should not release the hounds “if a lower level of force could reasonably be expected to control the suspect or allow for the apprehension.”

But the report reveals that the F.P.D. is quick to set loose its trained attack dogs—often on black children."

......................

The forensically presented evidence detailed in incident report after incident report is stunning.

[Fumesucker]

4. Makes excellent sense ..

Dogs read body language and pheromone cues very well.

The glands don't lie.

[valerief]

5. Sam Fuller's White Dog explores this.

http://www.criterion.com/films/861-white-dog

[Hestia]

6. It's not a bad movie per se, just hokey - it was contraversial when it ran on cable because

theaters refused to show this movie. Bad, over the top acting, but interesting subject matter.

[valerief]

19. This movie exposed the existence of white dogs. No need to divert the issue into a movie review.

Unless you have another agenda.

[freshwest]

10. I saw this years ago on television. It was a fictional account, but who can forget the use of police

attack dogs for years on black protestors and others?
A dog can be a valuable aid for many things. Ferguson has another mark on it and this has got to end!

[zappaman]

11. It's hokey

But had a good point.
Plus Burl Ives...

[valerief]

18. This movie exposed the existence of white dogs. No need to divert the issue into a movie review.

Unless you have another agenda.

[zappaman]

20. Its a discussion board

and I am responding to a poster who is not you.
Sorry, you don't get to tell anyone what they can post.


ETA: Oh it was you.
Funny how you bring it up then tell me I can't comment on it.
Anything else I can't comment on?

[valerief]

21. Methinks the pot is calling the kettle black. Buh-bye. And I AM responding to you.

(Your response to me that wasn't to me didn't make sense at all.)

[zappaman]

22. Buh bye.

Oh it was yo that brought it up.
Funny how you bring it up then tell me I can't comment on it.
Anything else I can't comment on?

[cali]

24. what the hell? I've rarely seen a clearer example

someone trying to shutdown other posters. Why should you police what people want to say about that movie?

[stone space]

7. I don't think that any dog owner will be surprised by this.

We all think that dogs (especially our own!) are one of the most intelligent species around, likely because of our tendency to judge intelligence in animals by their ability to read the minds of humans.

My own gut feeling is that this criteria for measuring animal intelligence is likely not so inaccurate when it comes to a species that has been codependent with humans for so long. The ability to read the minds of humans and respond appropriately has probably been a skill with great survival benefits for dogs over their recent evolutionary history.

[Lancero]

8. Racism is a learned behaviour...

...And dogs are very eager to please their owners.

[HappyMe]

9. Doesn't surprise me in the least.

Dogs are very tuned in to facial expressions, gestures, all sorts of things. Couple that with their training, and you have a smart dog with prejudices.

[Baitball Blogger]

12. D'oh!

[surrealAmerican]

13. How many white people did they ...

... release the dogs on? I'm guessing it's either zero, or a far smaller number than the number of black people they released them on.

The dogs are likely responding to the officers behavior at the time of the attack.

[jtuck004]

14. "Were no white suspects ever subdued with dogs?" < Until you know the answer to this there are

too many assumptions.

But if that is true, if only black folk were attacked with dogs (which I think is likely), then it isn't hidden racism at all. And the behavior we should be focusing on is that of the people, not the dogs.

[bettyellen]

25. The OP does actually fault the police dept and not the dogs....

not sure why you "assumed" otherwise.
Hard to prove that they were never used on whites, but none were bitten- so those are results we don't have to assume anything in order to discuss.

[jtuck004]

32. Because the incorrect title of the article assumes something not in evidence, along with a few

other assumptions, all unsubstantiated presumption, more bs.

There is nothing hidden about their racism - just a line to help white folk keep pretending that things are not like they are.

And it's not hard to prove who they are used on at all - they have a thing in our world called police reports, which is exactly how the info was gathered in the first place.

But, as your writing suggests, not everyone cares about such things,and instead perhaps have another agenda in which I am not interested.

so, bye,

[bettyellen]

35. It's a good article- and if they could dig up stats proving that dogs were never used on

White people, they would have. Not sure why you rip the article while agreeing it exposes an awful truth many others were not aware of. Lots of people assume dogs have some natural instincts and can judge independently of their humans. This exposes that myth and shows yet another metric by which to measure racism as practiced by law enforcement. I'll assume we both thing that's a good thing, your criticisms aside.

[bigtree]

15. k&r

...socializing dogs can make a huge difference in who they regard as hostile and who they regard as friendly.

[mopinko]

16. i've known many people over the years who swore their dogs

hated black people. i always took that as a tell.

[bettyellen]

23. This!

[erronis]

28. I'm hoping there are some good examples where dogs are sicced on whities!

I started writing this thinking I'd make a case for a largely black police force using dogs to "control" white people.

I quickly realized that we won't see this in the USofA, at least for very long. Perhaps there are other parts of the world where this might happen but I'm not familiar with any such stories.

I now realize that using dogs as a form of intimidation is primarily practiced by white USofA "law" enforcement.

This is taught behavior for the dogs - it doesn't arise from breeding or genetics.

The white bigoted (supremecists) are abnormal - probably inbred too many generations.

[Solly Mack]

17. I had a military dog trainer tell me that.

I'm going to send him this article. Thanks!

He didn't have anything other than his own experience with other trainers and their dogs but he said he believed it - that the animal picked up on the fears and prejudices of the trainer.

[Liberal_in_LA]

26. kick

[fasttense]

27. The police in Ferguson were NOT subtle about their racism.

Their dogs need NOT pick up on subtle cues, I'm sure there were more than enough overt cues.

[Orrex]

29. Damn racist mutts

I heard this report about a week ago. Shocking, but not at all surprising. It's pretty much what we'd all figured out about the Ferguson cops already.

[cherokeeprogressive]

30. I saw an episode of "Cops" and the bald white K9 cop's dog was named...

Eichmann. He called the dog "Ike" but during the episode he let it slip that "Ike" was the shortened version of the longer name.

[bullsnarfle]

31. Years ago my dad swore

he knew a guy who bought a young dog, and then hired a down-on-his-luck black fellow to come by every day to treat it cruelly (beat it with a stick, etc.), to make it hate black people.

There are a hell of a lot of evil people in this world...

[War Horse]

33. As someone who worked with German Shepherds for more than a decade

I can believe this.

Anecdote warning: My cousin had a Rhodesian Ridgeback. She was the nicest dog you can imagine, but we got to know a group of (black) South Africans, and they were extremely uneasy around that particular dog. My 100 lbs German Shepherd didn't bother them one bit.

Eventually we were told that their first instinct when encountering a Ridgeback was "white dog", as used by the SA authorities and set off to react much more strongly to blacks than whites. Certain things I've been told later seem to back this up, but again, just a personal anecdote.

[suffragette]

34. 2013 PARC report in L.A. showed both the racial disparity and the increase in bites

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/oct/07/local/la-me-sheriff-canine-20131008

Bites from sheriff's K-9 units increase for blacks, Latinos
Bites from K-9 units rose 33% for blacks, 30% for Latinos from 2004 to 2012, study finds. This year, 100% have been to Latinos and blacks.


33rd Semiannual Report of Special Counsel | Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department | September 2013

http://scvtv.com/pdf/lasd100713.pdf

We have, in the past, recommended that the LASD focus on the stark disparities in the racial and ethnic mix of persons who are bitten by police dogs. In the first six months of this year, 100 percent of the dog bites were of Blacks and Latinos. While the number of annual bites of Anglos, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans has remained consistently low from 2004 through 2012, 89 percent of the total bites in the same time period were of Latinos or Blacks. This 89 percent is an increase from a still troublesome 85 percent in the 1990s.

As shown in Table 1, the number of Latinos being bitten by dogs increased 30 percent, from 30 bites in 2004 to 39 bites in 2012. Similarly, from 2004 to 2012, the number of Blacks being bitten by dogs increased 33 percent, from 9 in 2004 to 12 in 2012. This trend of minority populations disproportionately being bitten has held firm in recent years. In 2010, 90 percent of the bites were on Black or Hispanic suspects; in 2011, 89 percent; 2012, 90 percent; and during the first six months of 2013, 100 percent or all of the 17 bites were on Black or Hispanic suspects. Consideration might be given to a partial moratorium on the use of canines in all but the most critical circumstances involving armed suspects as practices are developed to curb the disproportionate impact.

Much more in the PDF, including the tables referred to above.

The New Yorker article you posted does a great job of examining why this is occurring.