RIP K9 Kilo - Page 2

Slamdunc

Thank you for reading my mind with such clarity and posting  what I was thinking.

I had some hope that you and some of the other LEO's would be able to come up with some ideas that might help in situations as this even if they could not be 100% effective.

No matter how much we all care for our dogs the handlers saftey must come first.

We need to keep this tragedy in perspective. Another homicidal / suicidal gunman armed with an assault rifle and body armor goes on a killing spree. Two innocent citizens are killed and two Police Officers are ambushed and shot responding to a "routine" domestic disturbance by this suspect. Here on the PDB we get outrage over the dog killed while trying to save injured Officers and disdain once again for the Police. No mention of the innocent citizens killed, no condolences or outrage against the shooter. No outrage or concern for the Police Officers shot in the line of duty. But a "WTF" for the dog and demanding better training? It is so easy to judge from the safety of your keyboard with no actual knowledge or practical experience. It is a little different in the. "real" world. No one on this forum loves dogs more than me, no one values their K-9 partner more than me. Tragic as it is, people come first. Citizens come before cops and cops come before k-9s. That is the cold hard truth. I see lots of posts I'm tempted to respond too but won't bother. I couldn't let this one go. I'm done now and will abstain from participating here any further. Jim

Slamdunc.....That was an excellent post to bring it into perspective from a LE point of view and what happens in real life
situations.

Thanks for taking the time to post, It certainly opened my eyes and made me view the whole situation with my head and not with my heart.

"For the rest of the speculation and demands of training for these situations or better ways to handle the situation........well never mind, it is not worth it."

Hi, Jim!  Good to see you and I was hoping you'd weigh in on this.  I absolutely appreciate your perspective on this and you know better than any of us the difficulty in handling a situation like this.  From my vantage point, I don't see how this could ever have had a better outcome unless at least two officers were available to come to the fallen officer's aid...one to attempt to deal with the dog and the other to attend to the officer...and in the best of circumstances, someone is going to get bitten.

Would appreciate discussing this with you further...feel free to PM me and I'll send you my email address so that we can do so privately.

Keith

I see no reason to blame anyone but the maniac with the assault rifle. Condolences to all those stricken, including the K9 officer. My WTF is for the availability of assault weapons. Why should ANYONE be allowed to purchase these? Slamdunc, I have always appreciated your posts, & I will miss them. jackie harris

Jackie,

I don't think that anyone here is placing the blame for this incident on anyone other than the shooter but simply asking questions about whether or not some protocol could be developed that might mitigate harm to the dogs in these circumstances.  It is a very difficult situation because, as I said before, I see no way of doing so unless someone is willing to get bit and I'm not guessing a lot of people are going to stand up and volunteer for that and even if they did, without a lot of dog experience, your chances of getting that dog under control are minimal.  Would I take the bite hoping to get hold of the dog's collar or harness and wrestle him under control?  Yes but it is unreasonable to expect normal police officers who have no dog experience to do so.

Having said that, Jim has also, in various posts here, expressed concerns about some of his fellow officers who he knows are afraid of dogs and who he would expect to over-react so there may be some middle ground in which to at least hold a discussion.  I would submit that the death of any police dog deserves a review and conversation about whether or not the situation could have been handled in a way that may have prevented the death of the dog.

And for the record...Jim and I typically agree with almost everything as it relates to dogs.  This is his forte so I am asking for his guidance.

That is Jim's choice and his agency's, it does not mean that is the only choice out there.  My agency is small and I make a point of my dog knowing and being social with my fellow officers and giving them a few commands to be able to give the dog a chance by getting him in a patrol rig or on line if I become incapacitated.  In fact the July/August issue of Police K9 Magazine has an excellent article on that very topic. We should be able to reduce the "friendly fire" deaths of our K9's.

Slamdunc, I absolutely DO understand your point of view, and respect it for the experience from which it originates. I had my way, assault weapons, body armor and the like would never have been able to get into the hands of anyone other than soldiers and law enforcement  in the first place...so yeah, it DOES disgust me that the gunman in this case was able to ruin the lives of so many who'd never done him any disservice, seriously injure two human LEOs, and be responsible for the death of an innocent man coming home, and a four-legged LEO as well.  About the only slightly comforting thing that came out of the whole episode is the gunman taking his own life, so taxpayers won't be paying to keep him for the rest of his life while he wastes more tax dollars appealing his conviction at costly trials. Surely that's of very little consolation to anyone whose life was shattered because of that selfish fool, however.

But I stand by my, "WTF?"  This wasn't a situation where there were just two officers and the K9 on the scene and a raging fire-fight lasting hours and hours; there were 4 SWAT teams at the site, along with the patrolmen from two different towns, and according to the report given by chief of the Pendleton PD, all of the shooting took place at the onset of the incident...so this wasn't a situation where there was one fellow trying to get to the injured officer under a hail of gunfire; in fact, law enforcement believed the suspect had fled after the exchange of fire, so they weren't operating in the scenario you sketched out in your post. To quote the new reports, "the K9 was protecting his handler and would not allow crews to get Dulworth out of danger, so they had to kill the dog."

Off the cuff, in the situation as it's described by the Pendleton chief, five non-lethal (to the dog) ways to get the K9 to either stand down or otherwise stop guarding his handler's injured person: (1) someone guts it out and takes a bite from the dog, while one or more others drag the injured officer into a waiting car. Not ideal, not pretty, definitely gonna be some damage to the one bitten, but it wouldn't kill any of them. I am presuming that the dog is decently-trained, and will bite and hold on as opposed to thrashing about with re-bites. If the training is crap, then yeah, that's not gonna work. (2) Use something solid as a 'bite stick', keeping the dog focused on biting that while the 'crews' get the handler. (3)  Use a vehicle to drive the dog off the handler; (4) get animal control out there to contain the dog with a catch-pole; (5) Get the K9 handler's vehicle, drive it over to where the dog and handler are, open the door of the dog's section, and give the dog the oppportunity to 'kennel up' on his own into the familiar ride...  'Kill the dog' should have been the very last thing on the list of options, not the first or only, in the circumstances as they have been described by the Pendleton chief of police. 

Under active gunfire as your scenario unfolds, Slamdunc, while it would still eat me up to see it have to happen, yeah, killing the dog may well be the only choice available, but as Keith has already mentioned, there absolutely needs to be a dialogue pursued to prevent this from continuing to happen. I'm sure the person or persons who had to fire the shots that killed K9 Kilo would have much preferred not doing so, too.