In my case he didn't get bit. I restrained my K9 and another officer arrived to take the suspect into custody without being bitten .
Let me start off by saying what a pleasure it is to have a disagreement with someone that doesn't degenerate into name calling, other unprofessional behavior or hurt feelings. I always act as if we're having this conversation in person. This medium doesn't allow for the communication that occurs during face-to-face conversations, body language, facial expressions, tone of voice and the like; so it's easy to take something the wrong way.
In my case backup was 15 minutes away. Had the dog not been present the transient would have attacked me. He'd done this several times before, attacked officers without any provocation, other than their presence. Each time the DA's office decided not to prosecute because the injuries to the officers had been minor, and less than what the transient had received as a result of his actions. I saw him coming and took another route but he pursued us.
Like I said before I am for doing off leash searches but it's entirely dependant on the situation .
I don't like to use leashes on searches for a couple of reasons. It ties up one of the handlers hands. I like to have both hands available to control my gun. It gives the suspect a "handle" to use if and when he fights the dog. It gets tangled on "stuff" (table legs, chairs, lamps, etc., pulling them over and if the line is long enough, eventually stopping the forward progress of the dog. When this occurs the handler must stop and disentangle the dog. Usually when this occurs he's completely at the mercy of the suspect. The handler is down on his hands and knees disentangling the leash from around the legs of tables, chairs and the like. He's no longer behind cover or concealment, and is no longer aware of his surroundings. His cover officers had better be doing their job because he's not prepared to handle a suddenly-appearing-threat. The K-9' movement is restricted by the leash and unless a lot of conditioning has been done, his work is hampered by not being allowed to search freely. This is something that I've seen hundreds of times.
Bottom line, a leash won't prevent a bite. In fact, a handler who is relying on it to do so can easily be lulled into a false sense of security. If the dog is at the end of the leash, and he goes around a corner where the suspect is hiding, the bite will occur before the handler can do anything to stop it.
For me the officer safety risks posed to me while simply walking through a crowded mall with my dog off leash while on patrol doesn't out weigh the risks that my dog will pick that moment to show his imperfection due to all of the strong distractions around him or walk into a situation that the K9 might react to something he may perceive as a threat .
Please understand that I'm not advocating that everyone do this. I'm just talking about what I used to do and the level of control that I advocate people work towards. I'm told that it can't be done with "today's dogs" but one of those dogs is a dog I'm working with and he does it just fine. Those people who have asked for my help in getting to this level have achieved it.
I don't think it's tactically safer to get your dog out off leash everytime you encounter a group of people .
You're probably right.
For me when confronting a group of people or one person for that matter I believe in most cases you should leave the dog in the squad and use the same Officer safety tactics you used as a Patrol Officer before getting a K9 .
When I (for example) stopped a suspicious subject in an alley at 0300 hours I'd call the dog out of the car as I exited. I'd immediately tell the suspect to stand perfectly still and that there was a police dog loose in the area. The dog came out the driver's door and to a heel position. As we approached the edge of the lights I'd down him out of motion so that he was in the headlights. I'd alter my path of walking straight towards the suspect so that I could keep the dog in my peripheral vision. This divided the suspect's attention to two places, me and the dog, just as would be the case if I was working with a human partner. I'd direct the suspect to keep facing the dog and I'd circle behind him to do a pat down search. When it was finished, I'd walk to the side so that we both had the dog in our view while I interviewed him. The dog was in my view all the time. Sometimes the suspect would not be as compliant as he might and the dog would respond to his training and start to move towards the suspect to bite him. If this wasn't appropriate, I'd give him a command to down. If he got "too close" (my call) I'd have him move towards the car.
I'd do much the same with groups of people that I stopped. I think that his presence enhanced my safety, even more so than if another officer had been my partner.
As for reliability, once I was in a knock down, drag out fight, well, more of a wrestling match with a juvenile. He wasn't trying to hurt me only to escape, but it looked like a serious fight. The dog jumped out of the car (it had started out as a report call so I hadn't brought him) and started to come to my aid. I stopped him with a command and he returned to the car. By constantly setting up realistic training, I was able to maintain control when it was a real situation.
In a fight or flight situation , no matter how good their training was they didn't respond to that training . Do you think dogs may have that same type of reaction (not responding to training)in a fight or flight situation or a percieved fight or flight situation no matter how good their training ?
I don't think that anything that can happen in the street (before a fight starts) should be capable of putting a police dog into fight of flight. They shouldn't be feeling stress, they should think that "this situation" is just another training exercise. Of course once a fight starts and the dog realizes that he's outclassed in size and strength some dogs will go into fight or flight. But before that, no dog should be anywhere near that. So, to answer your question, no, I don't think that this could happen to a dog.
I have been able to varify others with similar claims as yours though and it was 1 of 3 things.
#1 They had an overly confident view of their K9's capabilities .
I put him into the se situations over and over during training so that I'd know what he do when they came up on the street. I wasn't "overly confident" I just knew how he'd respond because he'd been in that situation so many times. This is something that I see rather often; a handler does something 3-4 times with his dog and thinks that the dog "knows it." It takes many more reps and many more situations than that before a dog "knows" something.
#2 They were full of it .
Well there are plenty of people who will say this about me. ROFL. Since that dog is long gone it's impossible for you to see him. And you're on the other side of the US there's little chance for you to observe the dog I'm working now. You can either take my word for it or not. You could also do as I suggested and contact Donn Yarnall and ask him about that dog.
#3 They had very limited opprotunities to find out how consistant their K9's would be under those situations . (Had a small # of successes under those situations and started to believe there K9 would react that way all the time . )
I was one of the more proactive officers working night watch on a medium sized police department surrounded by Los Angeles. It was a commercial city with over 10,000 business licenses. The "sleeping population" population was about 40,000 and the "policing population" was over 250,000. I probably made 3-5 stops of suspicious persons every shift. Using the lower number that comes to about 600 a year for over five years. That's about 3,000 of these stops in my career. Is that a "limited (number of) opportunities?"
I just think your entensions will put some K9 Handlers in jeapardy if they start using their K9's off leash all the time and find out the hard way their training wasn't good enough or the odds just happened to be against them and the highly trained dog they had descided to be imperfect a that time .
I certainly don't advocate that people just take off their leashes and start working, without tons of preparation. This kind of thing needs to be tested thoroughly in realistic situations before it's put into operation. The muzzle is a great tool for this, once the dog has been completely desensitized to it so that he doesn't think it's a piece of equipment related to manwork.
Lou Castle has been kicked off this board. He is an OLD SCHOOL DOG TRAINER with little to offer. 
Re: K9 Cop Challenge
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