Why Police Departments Drop Their K9 Programs

By Ed Frawley

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This week, I received a disturbing e-mail from a fellow K-9 officer in southeast Wisconsin. A mutual friend and K-9 Officer has had his K-9 unit disbanded by his police department. I chose this occasion to talk about the pitfalls that face every K-9 program. I talked with several friends to gather the information for this article. Maybe our thoughts can help new handlers sidestep a few of the pitfalls that every program is going to be faced with.

K-9 programs fail far too often. There are a number of major reasons for this:

• Poor initial planning; departments who choose the wrong vendor to start their program
• Poor supervision from management
• Administrators who decide they do not need the program
• Local politicians who decide they do not like the program
• Poor education among the field troops that need to use the resource to make it valuable
• Handlers who do not follow through with their responsibilities

Poor Planning Results in Selecting the Wrong Vendor

The usual way a K-9 program comes into being is an officer decides he wants to be a K-9 handler. This officer then goes to his Chief (or Sheriff) and asks permission. Supervisors exercise their authority by telling the officer to look into it and get back to them with a proposal. If the handler is lucky, he will get good advice from other departments that have successful programs. More often than not, the officer gets bad information and the results are not good.

There are far more irresponsible and untrained vendors who sell police dogs than there are real professionals. The odds are against a department ending up with a professional. That's why there are so many second- and third-rate service dogs working the street in this country. The most common mistake administrators make occurs when they start a new K-9 program by selecting an inexperienced vendor to supply their dog and train their officers.

It is hard to place all the blame on administrators for such a simple but important mistake. When you stop and think about it, how does an administrator (who has never had any K-9 experience) go about selecting a vendor? Most look to local dog trainers and breeders. Unfortunately, we again find ourselves in a situation where the odds are stacked against the administrator. Most local civilians don't have the experience to offer valuable advice.

That brings us back to the same point we were at before, with the wrong vendor and a department being supplied with a dog that does not have the proper temperament and drive for service work. When this happens, the K-9 program is doomed to failure from the day of its inception.

It's not the scope of this article to explain how to select a vendor, but the simplest advice would be to look for departments with "Successful" programs and ask where they got their dogs and training.

The departments that cause me to shake my head in disgust are those that make officers purchase their own dogs. I don't have a lot of patience for a Chief or Sheriff who does this. These officers want to get involved in K-9 more than anything in the world. Unfortunately, a selection-tested patrol dog is going to cost $3,500.00 to $4,500.00 and this is beyond the means of most officers. Officers are then forced to accept less qualified, cheaper dogs. They find themselves accepting dogs that should not be selected for service work.

Poor Management Supervision

Too often, administrators do not have a clue on how to manage a K-9 unit. In addition, they do not make an effort to learn how to manage a K-9 unit. The result is that new handlers end up without any supervision. This often leads to problems.

Administrators need to pick a K-9 supervisor who sets performance standards for the K-9 teams. This goes beyond a certification program. Supervisors need to review the training records on the dogs on a regular basis. He needs to visit the weekly training and become familiar with the capabilities and weaknesses of each dog team. He needs to verify that weaknesses are addressed in training.

Supervisors also need to visit units in other departments to watch and discuss training and deployment procedures. He needs to talk with experienced K-9 officers and not those who have only been around the dogs for a year or two. It takes a long time to become proficient in this work.

A K-9 supervisor enforces minimum standards. These should be evaluated on a timely basis. If a dog team falls below this standard, the supervisor (or head trainer or someone who is qualified to make these decisions based on experience) must evaluate the team's training. The K-9 Supervisor must have the authority to take a dog team off the street if it does not maintain a minimum standard.

Picking the right man for this job is as critical as picking the right dog handlers. Departments need to make sure that these supervisors have a clear understanding of exactly how a K-9 program should run. This means that these supervisors need K-9 supervisor training just as the handlers need training.

Administrators feel they don't need the K-9 Program

It is not unheard of for a city program to fail because the County has an experienced effective K-9 program (or visa versa).

When the opposing law enforcement entity has a successful program, new handlers will have their performance compared to this other unit. This is a difficult situation for a new handler. Administrators (without experience) expect to see immediate results. They compare their handler's results to the experienced handlers right next door. This is a little foolish when these same administrators don't expect new officers to perform at the same level as experienced veterans. They run new recruits through a 3 to 6 months FTO (field training officer) program, but they expect their K-9 handler to show results right away. The K-9 supervisor needs to work with administrators to come up with a comprehensive K-9 policy and procedure manual. It's the supervisor's responsibility to see to it that the entire department follows this policy. A good example is that a dog should clear a burglary building before the officers go inside, not the other way around. When patrol officers break policy, they need to have a talk. If the problem continues, they need a letter of discipline in their personnel file.

Administrators need to understand that service dogs are no different than new recruits. The K-9 team gets better with time. Nothing can substitute on-the-job experience. I believe a new dog team takes a year to gain the confidence needed to reach peak performance. A perfect example of this is the RCMP in Canada. They run their new handlers through a 20-week training course before they are put on the street. Then a year later, they are brought back to the training center and are expected to re-certify at a higher standard.

Dealing with Local Politicians

It's the K-9 handler's job to become a politician. He has to continually sell his program. This program NEVER stops. There is no better way to accomplish this than to get out and give talks to the graduating DARE classes and the Boy Scouts Blue Gold dinners. Handlers need to understand that people are interested in police dogs. So they must seek out people in the Lyons Club, Rotary, Optimists etc. They must work at coming up with an interesting talk about their dogs, their training, their accomplishments, and role in law enforcement. This talk should be constantly evolving work in process.

If a handler does his job properly, he or she will build a broad-based support group that will come to the rescue when a politician or administrator wants to cancel a program. A well-run K-9 program is a valuable tool for every law enforcement entity. With enough pressure from the public, the people who try to eliminate these programs will find other areas to make their needed budgetary cuts.

It is also worth pointing out to both officials and administrators that in the scheme of things, a dog program is not very expensive. When one thinks that a new squad car costs $30,000 after it's decked out with lights and a radio, the cost of a dog and training is not very much. Especially when we consider the benefit to the community of a good dog program.

I would also question the community's commitment to the safety of their officers if they force officers to use cheap dogs that would never be accepted into a reputable K-9 program. If you ask me, these communities are opening themselves up to lawsuits if the officers are injured because they were forced to use unqualified dogs. There are a whole lot of cities and counties in this country who should sit back and read this last paragraph because it's only a matter of time before good attorneys figure this out.

Handler Problems

When I asked another K-9 officer, who is also a good friend, what his thoughts were on this subject, his comment was, “One of the biggest problems is the caliber of the handlers. It is not what it used to be. I see people go into K-9 for all the wrong reasons. Too many are using it as a tool to further themselves and their career and not because they want to fight crime and benefit their community. It comes down to dedication and integrity.”

I have to agree with this evaluation. I think departments could help themselves and their program if they could find an officer who has a sincere interest in dog training.

Administrators need to selection test handlers just as closely as vendors need to selection test dogs. Handlers need to be highly-motivated individuals who are in good physical shape. If a handler is going to handle a patrol dog (not a narcotics dog), he needs to be in good condition. A handler that is 40 pounds overweight is not going to cut it on a long track. Not only is this handler going to fail on the track, but he is also putting his life at risk from a heart attack or from finding himself in a position where he has to confront a combative suspect when he is drop-dead tired. That's not a good position to find oneself in.

Then there is the issue of the handlers who are in good shape but do not train their dogs. By that, I mean they do not do proper maintenance training. They have a responsibility to their job. Assuming they have been given a good dog and provided with adequate training and training time, they need to perform. They need results. This is not going to happen unless they are out there training all the time. The training to be a K-9 handler never ends. It goes on and on and on.

To excel in K-9 work requires dedication to the task. People who are poorly motivated should not apply. People who find themselves not wanting to go out to training should resign. They should do this before their lack of interest results in the department canning the program.

A new dog is like a rookie cop on the street, they need experience before they reach their peak performance.

Train the Troops

K-9 programs are not going to survive if the dogs are not used. This is a common problem. Regular street cops have to feel comfortable calling for the dogs. The only way this is going to happen is if they have had in-service training to understand the capabilities of the dogs. If a street cop feels that the K-9 handlers want to be called when an incident comes up, then they are going to be called.

There are always going to be street cops who refuse to call for the dogs. They know what the dogs can do, but for one reason or another, they let their personal opinions get in the way whether it be because they don't like the handler, don't want someone else to catch the offenders, etc. These officers need to be corrected by the K-9 supervisors. If the policy and procedures are written properly, the supervisor's job is to manage people like this. In any normal department, this would mean a verbal warning, a written warning, and then days off. This is how these problems are solved.

The bottom line is there are a lot of reasons a K-9 program fails. The road to success is filled with potholes.

A K-9 Officer Who Saved His Program

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About Author

Ed Frawley

Ed Frawley is the founder of Leerburg. He has been training dogs since the 1950s. For 30 years, Ed bred working bloodline German Shepherds and has produced over 350 litters. During this time, Ed began recording dog training videos and soon grew an interest in police service dogs. His narcotic dogs have been involved in over 1,000 narcotics searches resulting in hundreds of arrests in the state of Wisconsin. Ed now solely focuses on producing dog training courses with renowned dog trainers nationwide. If you want to learn more about Ed, read about his history here.

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