Canines

Police departments across the United States deploy canines for diverse roles including search and rescue, drug sniffing, explosive detection, crowd management, and suspect apprehension. While canines are not traditionally considered weapons, they can indeed be used by police to apply force. The collaboration and unique team dynamic formed between a human officer and a canine represents a specialized aspect of law enforcement strategy, reflecting a longstanding tradition in policing dating to the early 1900s.^[1] However, policing’s increased reliance on canines in engagements with criminal suspects has brought forward significant policy considerations that require critical analysis.

Canine uses of force should be analyzed under the same critical standards as traditional methods of force such as Tasers, batons, and other impact weapons. Data indicate that non-lethal injuries occur at significantly higher rates from canine deployment than from these other tools.^[2] There is also a long and troubling history in the United States of using canines in connection with racial violence, particularly against Black people—from 19th-century “slave dogs” to the use of dogs against civil rights protestors in the 1960s.^[3] Studies suggest that Black individuals constitute a disproportionate share of people bitten by police canines, making it crucial that strict use of force standards are applied to canine uses of force.^[4]

Policing authorities argue that canines serve as valuable law enforcement tools that can enhance officer and public safety.^{[5] Their speed and extraordinary senses can be harnessed to track and locate drugs, explosives, dead bodies, and hiding suspects.[6] But an important debate is emerging about whether canines should still be used by police forces for non-explosive detection purposes, with leading use of force experts arguing that “criminal apprehension” canines should be retired from police service because their dangers outweigh their benefits.[7]}

The arguments advanced by those criticizing the continued use of canines for apprehensions echo key principles of the Model Policy—prioritizing the value and dignity of human life and minimizing the harms faced by Black and brown communities. This module recognizes that many police departments across the U.S. may continue to use canines for search and apprehension purposes and these agencies can benefit from clear guidance on how the animals can be effectively utilized. For police departments that retain their “criminal apprehension” canines, the Model Policy recommends a set of restrictive policies aiming to minimize both physical and psychological injuries and enhance trust between law enforcement and communities.

Examining the history of canine misuse by police against Black communities

The use of canines by law enforcement against Black communities has a harrowing history that traces its roots back to the era of slavery. During the 19th century, slave owners used dogs to hunt escaped slaves and suppress attempts at rebellion. This practice continued into the civil rights movement, with police dogs unleashed on peaceful Black protesters.

Decades later, some police departments have continued to weaponize and disproportionately use canines against Black Americans.^[8] A nearly two-year review by the U.S. Department of Justice of the Louisville Metro Police Department in Kentucky revealed disturbing findings about the department’s use of canines, specifically against Black residents. The investigation uncovered a disproportionate targeting of Blacks that often occurred with minimal justification or oversight and prompted immediate calls for reform to the police department’s canine operations.

The Justice Department’s report described a highly troubling incident involving a 14-year-old Black teen who was lying face down in the grass, pleading for help, when a Louisville officer ordered his canine to bite the boy at least seven times without warning. Officers stood over the teen for nearly 30 seconds while the dog gnawed on his arm and at one point shouted, “Stop fighting my dog!” despite video showing the boy lying still with one arm behind his back and the other arm in the dog’s mouth. The police department’s records on the incident, which were obtained by investigative journalists, stated that the youth “did not give himself up to police” and that the dog was removed “once compliance was gained,” even though a video showed otherwise.^[10]

Another recent canine incident in Ohio illustrates the scope of the violence and harm. Jadarrius Rose, a 23-year-old Black truck driver, was pursued by state and local police after they attempted to pull him over for a missing mudflap on his trailer. Video shows that as he tried to surrender on the side of the highway with his hands in the air, a Circleville, Ohio canine handler approached him as a state trooper yelled repeatedly at the handler “Do not release the dog with his hands up!” Ignoring this order, the handler released the canine which proceeded to bite and injure Rose.

These alarming contemporary incidents further an unsettling historical legacy of police misusing canines against Black Americans. To prevent more undue harm and injustice, police agencies must deliberate on the methods and circumstances under which canines are employed, especially in their interactions with Black communities.

When should the use of canines be prohibited

An effective approach to lowering the risk of a dog harming a person, bystander, or officer, is limiting the use of canines to situations where they are necessary. Determining the reasonableness of a deployment of a canine—a standard used by federal courts to gauge an officer’s civil and criminal liability for unconstitutional force—largely hinges on specific facts and circumstances. But the Model Policy insists that police department policies should categorically prohibit deployments in certain situations based on significant policy considerations.

A primary consideration involves carefully weighing—and avoiding—the risk of serious injury to a person, bystander, or officer. When this risk of injury surpasses the threat posed by an individual, canines should not be deployed. In deploying a canine, police necessarily increase the likelihood of a person being injured by a canine bite.^[11] For this reason, canines should not be used for routine calls and arrests that do not present heightened danger to officers and other community members. Special considerations for young, elderly, or pregnant individuals also dictate that canines should not be used against members of these groups, even when the use of force is otherwise permitted, unless officers have no feasible alternatives.

Similarly, canines should never be used on subjects who are handcuffed or otherwise restrained.^[12] The use of force is not permitted under these circumstances and canines may create additional stress and potentially aggravate a situation. Canines should also not be used to physically search a person for narcotics or contraband. Officers can perform physical searches of a person more safely and accurately.^[13]

In crowd management situations, many police departments prohibit the use of canines unless there are exigent circumstances or officers obtain special authorization. For example, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s use of force policy restricts the use of canines while preserving an “emergency” exception for when the department engages in “an all-out police effort to rescue isolated officers or citizens in danger of being injured or killed.”^[14] The Model Policy bans the use of canines for crowd management but also recommends against including an exception for exigent circumstances that permits the use of canines to address challenges created by large groups of people. Exigent circumstances that police departments typically rely on to support the use of canines—like retrieving an isolated officer—necessarily involve volatile and inflammatory situations where human police officers would be better-suited to maintaining a baseline level of control.

Additionally, the use of canines in crowd management settings creates psychological effects that can be counterproductive.^[15] Many people react to dogs—and especially police canines—with fear, and fear does not necessarily lead to the type of rational decision-making that officers depend on to keep peace and maintain control over a crowd. In other words, introducing canines in the face of a protesting or riotous crowd could exacerbate the volatility and inflammatory nature of the situation.^[16] Police departments have also misused canines as a crowd management tool against groups organizing for societal progress^[17]—such as during the civil rights movement, when law enforcement in the South used canines and fire hoses to disperse groups of Black people protesting racial segregation.^[18]

Importantly, the Model Policy also prohibits the use of a canine solely to intimidate or coerce. The New Jersey Attorney General’s Office recently consulted with local Black community members and groups in revising the state’s use of force policy, and these constituencies strongly recommended that the revised policy prohibit the use of dogs to intimidate people, particularly given the history of canine use in these communities.^[19]

Key Force Regulations in Policies of 100 Largest U.S. Cities

Canine Regulations in Policies of 100 Largest U.S. Cities

The Model Policy’s approach to authorizing the use of canines

Canine bites can cause severe injuries, or even death, to individuals, bystanders, and dog handlers or other officers. Because of these risks, the Model Policy recommends that police department policies carefully outline their authorized uses of canines. Under the Model Policy’s approach, canines should be primarily used to detect contraband, explosives, and other crime scene evidence. The Model Policy also permits the use of canines to, in a limited set of circumstances, search for individuals and, in a very restricted set of circumstances, apprehend people that pose an imminent threat of harm to officers or others. In these situations where the potential for physical contact between a canine and a person significantly increases, our research supports applying strict use of force standards to canine uses of force.

Canine searches and apprehensions

Policies should clearly articulate that canines primarily serve to detect contraband, explosives, and other crime scene evidence. Canines should not be used in situations where individuals are suspected of committing minor crimes. This common-sense limitation, however, has yet to take hold. A 2020 investigation by the Marshall Project found that many canine bites target people in those circumstances and that these bites can cause unpredictable and life-threatening injuries.^[20]

Instead, the Model Policy limits the use of a canine to search for a person to when the person has committed or is committing a serious offense and when the balance of factors relating to law enforcement goals, safety, and risks support the use of a canine.^[21] The Policy stresses that a handler must prevent canine contact with a person during an authorized canine search, as opposed to certain authorized canine apprehensions where physical contact is anticipated, and accordingly should determine whether to proceed with the canine on-lead or off-lead.

Before using a canine to apprehend a person, police departments should impose additional requirements, including that the person poses an imminent threat of harm to the officers or others, that the standards for the use of force have been met, and that alternative tactics (including less severe force options) have been exhausted or are not safe and feasible. Otherwise, circumstances do not justify the risk to human life involved in the commonly used “bite and hold” technique, where the dog bites a person and then holds the individual with its mouth until officers establish physical control.

Using the “find and bark” or “bark and circle” techniques

To preserve human life, the Model Policy requires canines to be trained to use “find and bark” or “bark and circle” techniques when searching for individuals and apprehending them. These methods train a canine to alert a handler to the subject of a search by barking as a first response, and then circling and waiting until the handler arrives.^[22] One reason the Model Policy recommends this approach is that research demonstrates that canine deployments result in higher rates of hospital visits than any other types of force used by police.^[23] In Sacramento, California 30% of the police department's use of force cases over a certain period involved a canine.^[24] After the Los Angeles Police Department changed its canine policy from utilizing the “bite and hold” technique to a “find and bark” method, the agency saw a significant drop in injuries and hospitalizations.^[25] Once a handler determines that the preconditions for deploying a canine have been satisfied, the Model Policy requires the handler to give clear verbal warnings before using a canine and as the canine is deployed. Verbal warnings are an essential de-escalation tactic stressed throughout the Model Policy and provide a person with the opportunity to comply.

Importance of training for canines and their handlers

Effectively controlling the behavior of a canine requires specialized skill and knowledge rooted in science. Police handlers train extensively with their canines, honing the skills of the handler and their dog, but only a minority of use of force policies feature written requirements for annual canine training and certification. The Model Policy recommends that use of force policies have clear requirements for these training and certification processes that often cover a range of topics from apprehension techniques to drug detection and situational tactics. For these reasons, the Model Policy also requires a minimum of 20 hours per month of training for both canines and their handlers, as well as an annual certification process, an approach that aligns with law enforcement industry recommendations.^[26]

Canines can and do regularly injure people, and when trained, they can bite with a force much greater than an average dog bite.^[27] Thus, it is important for an officer to regularly train with their canine and appreciate that, even though the canine is a living, breathing animal, it is effectively a weapon when it is deployed to restrain a person. Training programs for handlers and canines should recognize these realities and, to the degree possible, resemble the training approaches for other police weapons that emphasize the gravity of choosing to employ the weapon. Adequate training can provide handlers and their canines with tactical options to address different situations and increase the likelihood that the canine team—and particularly the canine—will react appropriately to a given scenario.

Training is also important for more reliable drug detection. Historically, canines do not have high accuracy in drug detection with false alerts, when accurately documented, potentially exceeding 50 percent.^[28] With more training, however, canines can potentially develop sufficient skills to fulfill their law enforcement agency’s goals.

Reporting on canine uses of force

The Model Policy contains detailed provisions on reporting about uses of force involving canines and reviewing the appropriateness of these canine deployments. Many police department use of force policies require written documentation each time that a handler deploys a canine, whether for detecting or apprehending an individual. This documentation serves important purposes because the canine’s actions often end up offered as evidence in court.^[29] Prosecutors, for instance, regularly introduce evidence that a canine detected drugs or explosives. Documenting these events involving the use of detection dogs can be crucial to ensuring a successful prosecution.^[30]

While evidence of a detection canine’s satisfactory performance in a certification or training program can provide prima facie proof of the canine’s reliability,^[31] a criminal defendant “may contest the adequacy of [the] certification or training program, examine how the dog (or handler) performed in the assessments made in those settings, introduce evidence of the dog’s (or handler’s) history in the field, or ague that circumstances surrounding a particular alert may undermine the case for probable cause.”^[32] Put another way, if a canine’s handler fails to document the dog’s performance, this could be used to attack the canine’s credibility. A strong record of performance, on the other hand, can buttress the canine’s credibility.

Police departments should track the performance of their canines as they track the performance of their officers. If a canine has a history of unreliability or posing risks to the public,^[33] promptly and accurately documenting the canine’s behavior serves as the best way to ensure the department provides the canine with more training or responsibly decommissions the dog. Accordingly, the Model Policy requires handlers to document every deployment of a canine, regardless of whether a bite or injury occurs.^[34]

Reviewing and investigating canine deployments

Documenting canine deployments serves particularly important purposes when bites or injuries occur. The documentation should be reviewed by supervisors to assess the deployment's appropriateness. Additionally, people who are injured by canines may introduce the evidence in a civil rights lawsuit against the officer, department, and/or municipality.

Documenting the injury and surrounding circumstances helps factfinders—like a police chief, judge, or jury—assess the reasonableness of the canine deployment. Since injured individuals may be unable to document their injuries—especially if they are directly taken into custody—requiring the handler or another officer to document the event ensures that those evaluating the appropriateness of the use of force will have the information they need to make this determination.^[35]