Another approach: man's best friend

Ronald Mason

THE USE of police dogs to fight criminal activity has been around for a long time. In St Malo, France, the recorded history began in early 1300 and continued to 1770 after an incident where a navy personnel was killed while out after curfew. Ghen, Belgium, started a unit in 1899. The term 'dogs of war' can be traced to the Middle Ages, when dogs wore armour and were trained to nip at the legs of opposing knights' mount.

There is nothing new about using police dogs to quell criminal street gangs. The police dog programme was started in New York in 1907. Today, hundreds of police agencies in North America deploy more than 7,000 police canine teams for tasks as diverse as drug detection, crowd control, suspect apprehension and officer protection. On February 9, 2007, then Commissioner Lucius Thomas of the Jamaica Constabulary Force spoke of plans well on the way to merge the Canine and Narcotics squads. Since then - silence.

Our society has a major crime problem and it would be in our best interest to deploy all legitimate methods to reduce crime and apprehend criminals. The Jamaican Ministry of Agriculture is to use dogs in their quarantine programme. Their programme is expected to be cost-effective and has attracted funding from international sources. A canine police squad does not have to be large. The Vancouver, Canada, police dog squad has 18 handlers/dog teams working 24 hours a day seven days a week. There are 16 constables and two sergeants. The teams are trained a criminal apprehension as well as narcotics, firearm and explosive detections.

SOPHISTICATED TRAINING

The training of the police dog squad is intensive and very sophisticated. Generally, they fall into two schools. Find and bite versus find and bark. Critics of police crime focus on find-and-bite policing followed by many departments. Under a find-and-bite philosophy, the dog is trained to search for a suspect and the dog is allowed to bite the suspect upon locating same. The dog is trained to release the suspect upon an 'out', or to release the suspect once the suspect ceases to resist.

The greatest criticism levelled at find-and-bark policies is that the suspect is almost always bitten. The two schools are similar, although the dog is trained to hold or circle the suspect and to maintain a constant bark until the suspect is secured by officers. The dog is not trained to engage the suspect unless the handler commands, the suspect fights with the dog or the suspect takes an aggressive action towards the handler. This requires a superior dog, and the Los Angeles Police Department in California, USA, did a study and found an inability to stop the dog from attacking in a find-and-bark situation.

The find and bite is where the matter of liability is most likely to arise. Is it too much force that is used? Lawsuits do not happen when the dog bites. However, the mere fact that a police dog bites a suspect will not automatically expose the police force to liability. This matter has been litigated all the way to the US Supreme Court. In the matter of Monell v Department of Social Sciences, the court found that a government agency may be held liable only where the complainant can show; 1) the complainant suffered a constitutional breach (such as extreme force) and, 2) that the injury was due to an official agency, 'police or custom'.

UNSUCCESSFUL CASES

Although numerous claimants have alleged that a find-and-bite policy for apprehension of suspected criminals is an unconstitutional injury in itself, no claimant has yet been successful.

Other cases on the legal principle such as Robinette v Barnes; Tennessee v Garner, and Graham v Connor, the court addressed the degree of the crime, the degree and immediacy of the threat against officers and the public, and whether the criminal suspect is actively resisting attempts to apprehend him/her, either by force or fleeing. All these factors are to be viewed in the totality of the circumstances at the scene instead of 20/20 hindsight.

A few years ago, the San Diego Police Department in California made a deliberate choice to increase the number of police dog team in an effort to reduce police shootings. This is a familiar Jamaica problem. Results in San Diego show that the department has significantly reduced officer shootings of suspects.

One of the pillars on which the use of police dogs will find public acceptance and sound legal basis is training. Jamaica would be the same as other jurisdictions. Penny wise and Dollar stupid: Failure to train. It is not a factor regarding the breed of dog being deployed. The breed used varies from German shepherd to Rottweiler. It could be argued that big, ferocious in appearance dogs may by that factor alone be a deterrent to the suspect. Training is a must. The dogs must be adequately supervised. There can be no atmosphere of lawlessness.

Ronald Mason is a US immigration attorney/mediator. Send comments to: nationsagenda@gmail.com or columns@gleanerjm.com.