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This article is courtesy of Dog Sports Magazine
Retired K-9 Handler Van Bogardus
the use of police dogs constitutes deadly force, he says
Interviewed by Julia Priest
Contributing Editor
Van Bogardus, now retired from police work, was selected as one of the first two "pilot" K-9 handlers for the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department in June of 1980. His years in this field resulted in his belief that the use of police dogs ought to be construed as potentially deadly force. This view has earned him the scorn of a large portion of the police K9 community. Whether or not we editorially agree with him, we did want to give Bogardus the chance to sell his opinions to the working dog community.
His first exposure to working dogs came in Vietnam in 1969 when one of the scout dog handlers was wounded. "A couple of us took the long line, cut it down, tied it to our pack, and towed the dog around with us for a while. When the scout dog handler came back to pick up the dog, he was surprised that the dog hadn't bit us or anything."
He has a strong law enforcement background in training, tactics, and program development, having served as a staff drill instructor at the Los Angeles Sheriffs Academy in 1974, and as a trainer and team member of the LASD SWAT team during the 1984 Summer Olympics.
His work in police dogs began when he was selected as one of two pilot handlers to initiate their patrol dog program back in June, 1980.
"When we first started we used an in-house trainer," Bogardus recalled. "There was a sergeant from our narcotics bureau that seemed to have at least a little bit of knowledge about police dog work, and we trained in-house according to his instruction."
In 1985, while visiting Germany, he trained with the German police and passed their street certification test (PSP) at the school in Stuckenbrock. He believes that he is one of the first Americans to do so.
He is currently retired from the Sheriffs Department, and living in northern California, offering training and consulting for police departments and private individuals. A current client is the 1992 Youth Siegerin Kassi von Impact, a German Shepherd, who he hopes to train to Schutzhund I.
Bogardus holds views which many find unpopular, and says he has been subjected to some threats and harassment. Nevertheless, he has agreed to have his phone number and address published here, should anyone want to reach him for comment or for training. We begin:
DSM: Were these dogs in the LASD pilot K-9 program going to be used for a patrol or cross trained?
Bogardus: They were patrol dogs. There was an interesting twist to the entire program. The two of us- we were selected mainly because we had previous experience with special weapons teams. My background at that point was far stronger – I would say is even now stronger – in the area of tactical work, special weapons team activities, training and things the like that, than it ever was with police dogs. It’s just that I find this such an absolutely interesting field, kind of like, "The more you get, the more you want. "That's why I'm so interested in it.
DSM: Had the department had any kind of K-9 program before?
BOGARDUS: Yes, Los Angeles started using dogs with a bomb dog program. The dog was used exclusively with our arson explosives detail. After those successes, they moved on over to drug dogs. I'll tell you, it involved a lot of experimenting and exploring the feasibility. I think, in hindsight, the answers were pretty obvious, that the use of police dogs was feasible and was going to work out very nicely for us. However, we did have a couple of problems getting the program rolling. Looking back on it now, I think these are common problems that any agency wanting to get into police dogs is going to experience.
Program bugs
DSM: What kind of problems?
BOGARDUS: Well, you have to understand my perspective; I was looking at this from a training standpoint. Having been a trainer, like a field training officer, I saw problems with the quantity and the quality of training. Another area was the selection of the dogs themselves.
DSM: Where were they getting the dogs from at that time?
BOGARDUS: The first dogs were donated. I dare say that's where I started learning the lesson about donated dogs oftentimes equating to donated problems.
Those free dogs
DSM: Were they all German Shepherds or were they various breeds?
BOGARDUS: My dog was a German Shepherd. That was "Marco". He's gone now, but I still love him. He was a very nice dog, but he was really the wrong dog to use for the volume and the type of work that I was actually involved in.
DSM: That was a donated dog?
BOGARDUS: He was donated.
DSM: How far did you get with him?
BOGARDUS: I actually used him for the first two years. I have to say that he did a very good job-he found a lot of crooks. I really can't be too critical of the dog, because I think God was kind not only to the dog but me, too. It was with this dog that I started realizing that this was a pretty big subject and I had to learn everything I could, otherwise I was going to have to get out.
I started realizing that I could get into tactical problems – officer safety problems as a result. In one case, I frankly thought that had I not had the dog there it might have cost me my life, then on the other hand, because the dog was there, it nearly cost me my life. So I had a lot of wrestling to do with that.
Touchy situation
DSM: Can you expand on that a little bit? Was it a tactical problem or a training problem?
BOGARDUS: There were a number of issues. The situation was an area search for two armed robbers that had come from out of the county. It was a vehicle pursuit over hill and dale, and across the freeways. These guys were known to be armed with at least a sawed-off rifle; there might have been two rifles involved. We didn't know at the time.
We thought there was a possibility that the rifle or rifles were misidentified, and maybe it was a sawed-off shotgun. Anyway, the pursuit terminated in a semi-rural area. There were houses with large horse – like properties. I began doing an area search and a little bit of tracking along the way with the dog.
I started from the suspect vehicle. Along the way we found a little bit of money, some bandannas used to cover their faces, and then we found some candies. We thought maybe we were dealing with some kids; we weren't sure. There were no weapons at least up to that point. It finally came down to a decision that, okay, we've gotten three more houses left and we've covered the entire area.
Deep inside I felt like I've got these suspects at one of these three houses. I decided to search the center house, like a classical box search situation. I decided to hit the first house and check the front. The open garage really didn't have too much in it. There was an open door that went out to the backyard.
Called to search
DSM: Were you serving as a regular patrol function and just happened to have a dog, or were you assigned specifically...
BOGARDUS: I was actually in service at that point. I had been in service working a police dog for about three or four months.
DSM: Was this a situation where you were involved in the initial pursuit, or you had been called in as the K-9 handler?
BOGARDUS: I was called after the pursuit terminated and an area search was desired. The department knew that we had patrol dogs available. That was the first thing they requested-get the dogs on board and let's do a search. Everything worked out real fine.
Blue steel
At this particular house I called into the backyard and there was no response. I’ll take a series of events and just hit the high points. I sent my dog into the backyard he was there for about 30 seconds or so. I didn't hear anything, didn’t see the dog, I'd flipped in the light a couple of times and I really wasn't sure where he was.
All of a sudden I heard a suspect scream out that my dog had bitten this guy. I thought, great, he found him! In my stupidity and haste and excitement I went rushing into the darkness to find the dog because he had engaged a suspect and was biting him. As soon as I got there, sure enough, he was biting the guy, but out of my peripheral vision I could see like a stack of junk and everything.
I could see what appeared to be a sawed-off shotgun and that's what it was. As I reached down to get this gun, the second suspect is reaching for the gun at the same time. I then got involved with wrestling a sawed – off shotgun away from a second suspect. I probably fought for the gun for the better part of 30 seconds, which is an eternity.
DSM: What was happening with the dog and the first suspect at the time?
BOGARDUS: The dog was continuing to chew him up.
DSM: Did you have any cover as the dog handler, or were you sort of out there on your own?
BOGARDUS: No, I had covering officers with me. I even had another handler that had just started with our K-9 unit. He was trying to get his feet wet with the idea of searching with dogs. He was in a separate part of the neighborhood where he had completed his search.
At any rate, after this 30 seconds was over, I got the gun away from him and tossed it away. I later found out that another deputy simply picked it up as I started to toss it away. I got this guy hooked up, and as I stood up and looked around, I saw there were a couple of other deputies standing there. I thought, wait a minute, wait a minute. I asked them what the hell's wrong with me, I could have used some help! I've got dirt and grass coming out of my nose and ears....
Exposure to danger
DSM: They didn't want to get bit.
BOGARDUS: That's exactly what they said. They were afraid they were going to get bit. They thought that I was doing a simply superb job! Needless to say, I got a little upset over that. In fact, I went into my own little mini-rage. I resolved that either I had to learn more about this stuff or I was out of it. I wasn't going to do this anymore. It didn’t make sense to me that by having a dog and doing these things I would elevate my risk profile rather than reduce my risk profile.
DSM: You don't feel the dog let you down. You feel that the training or the program let you down?
BOGARDUS: No, the dog didn’t let me down at all. If a suspect is going to be bitten by a police dog, that dog can only bite one person at a time. That was the problem, that's why I say I got into some tactical problems there. I had left a place of cover to rush on up there. In my haste, I was operating under a find and-bite policy that the department had adopted.
You find, you bite
DSM: Did they go over the different options at that time, or was that pretty much the only way it was done?
BOGARDUS: No, I don't think there was any discussion at all at that time. You see, I was one of the first handlers in LA County. There were a couple of the south bay cities that had K-9 units, but for the southeastern part of LA county, my colleague deputy and I were among the first, if not the first. There was no discussion; it was simply you find them and you bite them.
That started raising some serious tactical and policy issues with me. What played on my mind heaviest were the words of some of our department executives at that time. They said, essentially, we don't know anything about this subject and we're depending on you to find out for us. We want you to find out what is good and why it's good, what is bad and why it's bad, and then suggest a direction we can follow.
Beware both ends
DSM: Now this is still back about 1980?
BOGARDUS: At this point I'm in the early part of 1981, actually. I would say at that point I was still inexperienced enough not to know even how to frame the questions. I knew I had a problem but I didn't know how to articulate my own problem.
DSM: Did you know who to ask?
BOGARDUS: No, that's why I went on my quest. I started talking to anybody who knew anything about police dogs. I knew I started out from the standpoint that all I could tell you was which end of the dog had the teeth and which didn't, and that you have to be careful of both ends at different times. I talked to Schutzhund people, I talked to guard dog services, I talked to AKC people, I talked to anybody that had any idea at all.
Schutzhund trainers
DSM: Who did you talk to among the Schutzhund people? There weren't a lot of them around. How did you find them?
BOGARDUS: There were a couple of clubs in the Long Beach area-you know, Leo Muller, he is a good guy. I didn't have anything good, bad or otherwise to say about Schutzhund people. it's just that I knew that was a step in the right direction. Many of the other police dogs I knew of at that time had some Schutzhund training in their background. I thought, well, it sounds logical, let's check with some of these people. Who else was out there? I checked with, oh there must have been a half – dozen people including Jean-Claude Balu, a nice man.
DSM: And he's still around.
BOGARDUS: Yeah, he is still around. But anyway, because I was having these problems, I was calling all over the country, too. I started realizing that there was a bigger dimension to this police dog work than I had ever realized.
The basic rule
DSM: Was the department supportive of your efforts to do this?
BOGARDUS: Initially. yes. However, later on, it was as if this police dog program had created its own momentum. It was going to continue to move and it really didn't matter whether I said something about it or not. That's where I see a lot of problems that I experienced personally, and I see other officers experiencing even today. That is, if you're going to handle a police dog, you have to remember one fundamental rule. I like to call it the first basic rule of police K-9 work: You are a police officer first and a dog handler second. If you can keep that perspective, you're not going to get in trouble.
In other words, if you think and behave like a police officer based on your training and experience, you're not going to do stupid things like I did. I went rushing into the darkness to take a look at my police dog biting – as it turned out – a juvenile. That way you can keep yourself safe. If you think and act like a police officer, you are going to look at certain people, certain trainers and other persons involved in the police dog arena a little bit differently.
Civilian trainers
For example, there are a lot of people out there who will represent to police officers that they can train those police officers to be police dog handlers, when these persons have no experience whatsoever in law enforcement. That didn't make any sense to me.
There was only a single exception, an early person who was giving me a lot of instruction on police dogs. He was one of these people with no police experience but he was training police dogs, Leonard Messana. He disappeared, so I was still pretty much in the same boat as I was before that. I avoided anybody that was not a police officer. I knew that, based on conversations, just about every conversation would have a common thread running through it, that the German police do it this way or the polizei do it that way.
Sexton, Nope & Co.
DSM: Right, it's a different focus over there.
BOGARDUS: Well, I got interested in that and I finally hooked up with two American police officers that were the first graduates from the State Police School for Service Dog Handlers at Schloss Holte – Stuckenrock in the state of North Rheinland, they were Ted Sexton and Wendell Nope. I think that these two guys are going to be regarded in police dog history as very influential and pivotal people, they provided good training. At the time that I hooked up with them, I was looking for some alternatives, because clearly this find – and bite business just didn't make good sense. There had to be an alternative. It took me, well let's see, I didn't actually meet them physically until May, 1983. I didn't take the course they had to offer until January, 1985.
Less is best
DSM: Was that over there or over here?
BOGARDUS: Sexton came to Los Angeles and there were a couple of other police officers. We all gathered in LA and we did our own little training class right there. It was very enlightening, I have absolutely nothing bad to say about it. I do have a couple of little minor points to critique. All of us would discuss what we were doing just about every day, we'd get done and we'd kind of debrief on what we had done.
I started looking at what was described as the "minimal force apprehension." At first I said, "Nope, I don't think so," but it was something that grew on me in a very short period of time. The more I looked at it the better it looked. To this day in my police dog career, I say a reasonable force, a minimal force, apprehension is absolutely the only way a police agency can go.
Police dog as locator
DSM: When you say "minimal force apprehension" are you talking about a "hold and bark?"
BOGARDUS: Yeah, I describe it as a find and bark. I always like to put on the back side of it the word "only." If you look at the two basic approaches, what I find with the find and bark is that the officer retains just as much officer safety, he is just as effective with his police dog. It doesn't mean that the police dog is any less effective, it doesn't mean anything is less, the dog is just as tough, but the dog is not going to bite every person to conclude the operation.
DSM: Let me get this clear. When you say find and bark only, that implies that the dog is not going to bite at all under any circumstances or....
BOGARDUS: No, no, that's some of the material that I wanted to get into with you. I'm going to identify the criteria where I say a police dog should be permitted to bite. We’re going to digress just a little bit here, but you know, this a policy issue that a police department has to address.
Speaking specifically of agencies that I'm aware of in southern California – the police dog policies, the SOPs that have been developed – are conspicuous for what they do not say, and what they do not list are the conditions that must be present in order for a dog to be permitted to bite, and those that must be present where the dog is not permitted to bite.
When he can bite
DSM: Can you go into a couple of those, or some general...?
BOGARDUS: Well, in broad generalities there are basically two conditions that I have. I've developed an SOP mainly because I couldn't find a model that worked otherwise. I have two basic criteria that I operate from. The first would be – this is where a dog would be permitted to bite one, to protect the dog, the handler or other officers only if the handler has probable cause to believe that such force is reasonable and necessary to prevent death or serious bodily injury to himself or another person. We have our handler defense issues, this is the criterion that I've developed that says yeah, handler defense is an area where we need our police dogs for protection.
DSM: So this is implying that only the handler can make that decision and the dog is not going to make that move on his own?
BOGARDUS: The dog can't. A dog cannot think in abstracts. The dog is incapable of exercising human judgment.
DSM: Right, but if you're talking in terms of handler protection. Let's say you have a subject whom the handler might not perceive as a great bodily threat, but who in the dog's mind makes an aggressive move toward the handler. You're saying that you don't want the dog making that decision.
BOGARDUS: No, the dog can't make the decision. We have to move back to training at that point. The trainer, the supervisor, the handler, they have to identify the criteria and the conditions that must be present so that you can train the dog to realize that when these conditions are present, you're expected to bite and fight.
This is an area where some handlers do quite well, they have no problem with understanding what the criteria are. There are other handlers who don't have the same ease in understanding it. What I think now is that is has to be more than a blink of the eye or twitch of the shoulder, or a simple shove – away of the handler, it has to be more than that. I lean quite heavily toward the handler knockdown.
You have back-up
DSM: That was my next question. How are you going to make this clear for the dog? He only can respond to the stimuli that mean something to him.
BOGARDUS: Basically what you're doing any time you train a dog to do anything in service are that you're going to elicit as an end result a Pavlovian response. It makes dog training really pretty simple. If the trainer, and the handler, and the supervisor and the police management are all on board and they are all in agreement, then we understand certain things in law enforcement. It is a rare occasion for a police dog handler to ever be operating alone, truly alone. I know it can happen in certain rural or remote areas of the country, but my own personal experience was that I had more help than I actually needed in many cases when I was on a K-9 operation.
A clear signal to go
DSM: Right, in a big agency.
BOGARDUS: So, that being the case, why would I want to use a dog to bite somebody when I had enough people there to help me out with somebody that we fear might be posing some kind of a threat to us? Most policies are very loose. What I've done is kind of tighten them up a little bit. So the criteria I suggest now for any American police dog handler is a handler knock-down. What it would have to be is unmistakable to the dog. If there is something that is in between there, like maybe the handler knock-down and he falls to his knees, it's something that's going to cause an unnecessary bite.
DSM: But do you still want to have the option of having the handler make the decision and be able to send the dog on a verbal command?
BOGARDUS: You're touching another thing right there. I don't have a bite command in my handler's vocabulary, I don't even teach that anymore.
What is that dog?
DSM: So, the picture that I'm getting is, if the handler is knocked to the ground but perceives that there is a threat from this person, which maybe isn't clear to the dog, you don't want the handler to be able to tell the dog...
BOGARDUS: I want that handler to do what a police officer would do. Let's go back to that first fundamental rule-that handler is going to do the first natural thing that any cop would do, and that is to seek cover. He is not going to engage a suspect until he knows if the suspect is armed.
The handler has to know that he is in a position of safety first of all. We've got countless stories in our officer safety classes that talk about a police officer leaving a position of cover, and as a result he pays with his life. We've got to keep that first fundamental rule in mind.
If a handler is operating under the belief that he is encountering, or about to engage, a person that is really armed, that handler seldom to never will send his police dog and generally will always seek cover first and gain control of the situation. What I'm going to suggest to you is that the problem that most agencies have is they do not look at the use the police dog as a use of force.
The argument is, is the dog a tool or is the dog a weapon? We can only say that history tells us that dogs are used as tools. and any time you try to use the dog as a weapon it's going to cause a problem for you. It's going to cause an officer safety problem, it's going to elevate an agency's liability profile, and the dominoes just keep falling,
Search to locate
DSM: So, you re saying that the properties that the dog has which may cause injury to someone, you don't want to shape them; you don't want to use them.
BOGARDUS: Well, I say that when a handler – dog team has located a criminal suspect, their job has been completed. At that point, other covering officers or whatever can effect the arrest. What I suggest is that the handler withdraw and get out of the way so that the cops can conclude their work the way they've always concluded their work. that's s by putting on handcuffs, gathering evidence and just plugging the suspect into the system, and that’s the way it should be done.
Defining the mission
DSM: Okay. in a larger agency, the applications of that are maybe more widespread. Are you suggesting this for all agencies, or just for the larger ones where the cover is there?
BOGARDUS: Sure. I identified a problem that I see with American police dogs and that is that too many of them are receiving their training from civilian or importing vendors that are not training the police officer in the constitutional applications in the use of force.
DSM: Okay, so in terms of tactics and application, you are saying that's the responsibility of the police agency and their training. In terms of the dog's training and what constitutes good dog training, do you think that always fits?
BOGARDUS: I'm not sure I understand your question. I think that police dogs should be trained to do certain things for us, and as law enforcement officers we need to identify the specific things we want the dog to do. The Europeans have done a real good job with this. As a for – instance, the Germans have their DPOs and PSPs. These are historically successful, well-defined guidelines on how a dog is supposed to be used. If the handler-dog team does not adhere to those rules and regulations, it's simple, he is not certified for service on the street.
The five-part test
DSM: In terms of criteria for selecting the animal, you're saying that trainability and obedience factors are higher in ranking than, say, the dog's willingness or courage to bite?
BOGARDUS: No, no, I'm not saying that at all. The selection tests that I learned, according to the Germans, are a very thorough, comprehensive selection method. The incidents of failure with dogs that have been selected according to its criteria are extremely low.
DSM: Can you talk about some of those tests and what they mean in terms of what you want from a dog?
BOGARDUS: Just briefly, the patrol dog selection test is a five-part test. In the first four parts or phases, the dog is muzzled In the final phase, the dog is placed on a kennel chain or a tie-out cable, and that's where the dog is actually biting. The test with an experienced dog that is tolerant to a muzzle is run in sequence one, two, three, four, five. However, with inexperienced dogs or dogs not tolerant to a muzzle, it's run in reverse.
Into the woods
Test one, the suspect or a decoy helper is going to give the dog the raspberries, run approximately 100 yards away into a bushy area, and once the suspect is out of sight the dog is released. The handler remains in position. The dog is going to close the distance and hunt for the suspect. You're looking for the dog's alertness, his speed, his hunt and guarding behavior once he finds the decoy. Notations are made in between on what the dog is doing such as whether he is urinating, is distracted by somebody or disinterested.
Test two, the decoy will take off running away from the handler – dog team, and at about 40 yards away the dog is released. You want to see how the dog alerts on the suspect running. The decoy is running at a military double-time. You want to see how the dog's speed is in closing with the suspect. Is it full speed or is he just kind lollygagging his way along? Is he distracted or disinterested? You want to see where the dog hits and where the dog fights thereafter.
A courage test
DSM: Again, these are muzzled situations?
BOGARDUS: Yes, muzzled dogs. The decoy just keeps right on doing his double time. You want to see how the dog engages and how the dog behaves during the engagement. Does the dog stay with it, or do one, two, or three hits and then that's it, he's returning to the handler.
Test three would be essentially like your Schutzhund courage test, except, of course, the dog is muzzled. The decoy runs about 40 yards away, the dog is released, and once the dog has developed his full speed, the decoy turns around and tries to discourage the dog from engaging him by yelling "Go home" and giving him the raspberries. The decoy can also have a handful of leaves or grass which he throws at the dog; that has a kind of visual shotgun effect to the dog's eyes.
Sneak attack
DSM: No stick hits or anything like that?
BOGARDUS: No, not at that point. There will be some stick hits in the next test. Okay, test four is kind of like a Pearl Harbor attack. The decoy is hidden in a bushy area and the handler moves along this hedge row or bush line with the dog. The decoy jumps out in a surprise attack on the handler and shoves the handler away. At that point, at least we hope, the dog is going to engage the decoy and there will be some muzzle fighting along the way.
During the course of the muzzle fight and the dog engaging the decoy, the decoy is going to check on pain thresholds by pinching or flanking the dog. There will be some stick hits across the non sensitive parts of the dog's back, which would be the withers. Either just before or just after, at a distance of about 20 yards or so, .38 caliber or 9 millimeter blanks are fired, usually about three of them, to check on any gun shyness or noise sensitivity.
After that test is completed, the dog is staked out and you'll be doing a confidence stress approach test as if you're stalking the dog to see if there is any problem there. There will also be a bite on the sleeve. You're also looking for evidence of any force training that the dog might have received, such as in guard dog work or perhaps in Schutzhund sport, or something like that.
The age at test time
DSM: And typically at what age are these dogs being evaluated?
BOGARDUS: Well, you want to get dogs that are mentally, physically and sexually mature. As a rule, they're probably going to be pushing around 18 months, however, I've seen some dogs selected as young as 14 months. A couple of years back I had a German Shepherd that I got from Germany, a nice dog, he was 8 months old.
This month-old German Shepherd puppy would fight in the muzzle. Now that is rare, very unusual. Generally speaking, you're looking at a dog about 18 months old. Again, dogs successfully passing this selection criteria generally will give you a very productive service life. The incidence of failure is very low in Germany, and my experience in the United States is that if a dog can pass that test, he works out just fine.
Insatiable
DSM: Is this something that your agency did adopt?
BOGARDUS: No. They didn't adopt it. I pretty much financed my own way through this training mostly because of my own interest. Again, it was like the more I learned, the more I was hungry to learn. They really weren't too concerned about getting dogs at that point because there were vendors in southern California that they felt they could comfortably go and buy a dog whenever they needed one.
DSM: Those dogs were typically imports?
BOGARDUS: Typically yes, they were imports. There were two fairly large and prominent kennels at the time, and there were the Mandelyn and the Adlerhorst dogs. At that time, they were typically German Shepherd, usually with some element of Schutzhund training in their background. They were imported and then sold to police agencies that wanted to buy the dogs.
It's a sport
DSM: Then did they institute a program to transfer the dogs over from whatever training they had into useful police-type tactics?
BOGARDUS: Yeah, and that posed a problem, because both kennels at the time would have the Schutzhund dogs, and Schutzhund dogs are. and as we all know, very sports oriented. They would offer two weeks of training. which at the time seemed quite inadequate to me. Within two weeks, you too could have a police dog! The dogs were purchased and the handlers were given their two weeks of training and, voila! we had police officers with Schutzhund dogs on the streets of Los Angeles.
At the time I kind of shuddered. I wasn't as enlightened as I am now, or as understanding of how the system worked, but it just didn't seem right to me. I knew as a police officer I was going to be the product of my training. I don't mean to be silly here, but two weeks of training for a mere dumb beast just didn't seem adequate.
DSM: So has it progressed from that process in that agency?
BOGARDUS: Well, I can only speak of my own agency. They're still purchasing dogs from Adlerhorst Kennels. that's all I really know.
A different dog
DSM: Is it still two weeks from a Schutzhund to a police dog?
BOGARDUS: No, in fact, with the Malinois that are coming out of Holland and western Europe now. The training has increased. It’s a different type of dog than what we had back in 1980 and 1981. The training has gone to three to four weeks, and now is a five-week program.
DSM: Is this still done by the vendor who is selling the dog, or is the agency handling their own training program?
BOGARDUS: Well, it's a little of both actually, with my agency. I think what they do is attend a basic course but they do their maintenance training in-house.
DSM: What's the background of the dog trainer?
BOGARDUS: It's a civilian vendor.
DSM: But whoever is doing the in-house training is a police officer.
BOGARDUS: That's a deputy sheriff. They're just doing their own in-house training now.
They're new problems
DSM: Are you seeing the same kinds of problems or new problems? What do you think is going on?
BOGARDUS: I think some new problems have come up, with the same basic tale that I told you before. It is my own belief that you cannot have a patrol dog work effectively with a special weapons team. I've thought about this thing every way I possibly can for a long, long time. I think the basic words I have for anybody that would like to take a patrol dog and work it with a special weapons team or any kind of a team, is that it can have fatal consequences.
I have personal experience with this back in January, 1988. Fred House from the Utah Department of Corrections was killed in Marion, UT. He was serving with an FBI Special Weapons Team. They had surrounded a polygamist house and this guy was armed to the teeth. They were trying to devise a plan and a way to start extracting these people, or solving the situation.
the contradiction
Fred House was a very good policeman. In fact, his know-how and skill I would say were at least average, if not above average of anyone with whom I've ever worked. He had a very nice dog that he trained down at Tuscaloosa with Sexton. He received excellent, excellent training. He was a very good certified police patrol dog and worked well. The specific error he made is that Fred took that dog that had been trained as a tool and tried to use it as a weapon.
He did what was so frustrating to me years before. I would take my dog and clean him up, clean him up, clean him up for patrol work, and then dirty him up, dirty him up, dirty him up in order to work as a weapon with a special weapons team. It got to the point where my training time became inordinate.
I explained this to Fred. I did a little bit of training with him for about a one week period, and we discussed the theory behind all of this stuff. I think what Fred wanted to do was prove the viability of his dog in a tactical setting. He expected that the dog was going to go out and find somebody nearby this polygamist's house, but the dog just simply didn't have good target ID.
He erred, he said
Anyway, Fred set up with his dog. There seem to be a couple of different stories that have been bandied around over what actually occurred. At any rate, he sent the dog through a doorway of an out building and at about the same time stepped across the doorway. At that point he was shot through and through. The round that killed him went more or less armpit to armpit across his body. He was wearing soft body armor like anybody else would with a SWAT team, but it went over the edges. What Fred did there by trying to encourage his dog and sending him out to work, is Fred left cover and it proved to be a fatal mistake.
He was using a dog that had been trained as a tool, with the expectation that the dog would perform as a weapon. The dog could only do one thing under those circumstances, and that was to fail Fred House. I have nothing but good things and good memories of that man. I'm not being critical of him. But what I would like to say is that as an experienced police officer, now retired, any of the entry-level handlers really should not do that unless you have thoroughly, thoroughly, thought the situation out, and you've got a heavy base of rehearsal training before you ever attempt it in service.
Special weapons
DSM: When you talk about special weapons teams and you talk about using a patrol dog, how do you feel about the use of tactical dogs in terms of special training? What some people call SWAT dogs as opposed to patrol dogs.
BOGARDUS: I don't think the patrol dog should be used with SWAT teams. I think that tactical dogs should be regarded as a specific discipline just the same as we have explosive detectors, drug detectors, forensic trackers, patrol dogs. A tactical dog is a specific tactical dog.
DSM: Are those in use now with that agency?
BOGARDUS: No. They still use their dogs in calls for service for patrol and at the same time will augment a special weapons team with that dog.
Not cost effective
DSM: Have you seen agencies where they do have specially trained tactical dogs and they're working out?
BOGARDUS: I haven't seen any yet. I've had occasion to train in various parts of the country, but you see it becomes a dollar-and-cents issue with many agencies wanting to get the biggest bang for the buck that they can, and they'll do dual-purpose dogs, patrol dog and then they'll train the dog to find drugs. I'm not so sure any agency would view a specific tactical dog as a cost effective thing to do.
DSM: What kinds of things would the tactical dog be expected to do that a patrol dog would not?
BOGARDUS: A tactical dog has to be better in every category. Let's say, using that test that I just described to you, he starts out as an excellent prospect. The dog has to be more trainable, has to have better fight drive than the average dog. Like I say, in every category, such as in agility. There are a lot of things that a dog has to do in a tactical setting that a police patrol dog would seldom or never have to do.
One of the things that I always suggest with a tactical dog is that the handler start training him on a ladder. Ladder training is difficult enough, but eventually the dog should be able to climb, even with handler assistance a conventional ladder to a second-story window. If he can't, then really the dog shouldn't be regarded as a true tactical dog.
The handler with a tactical dog has to keep in mind this concept, that is, where the special weapons team goes, the handler-dog team must be able to go, too. The dog has to be very stable so that he s suitable for air delivery with a special weapons team.
Silence, please
DSM: Have you found that one breed has greater prospects over another?
BOGARDUS: Not necessarily. I think a lot of the Malinois I've seen have some very high drives. If the drive level gives the dog an overall appearance of being on the hectic side, I wouldn't use the dog. I'd save him for something else. You cannot have a dog so easily stimulated to bark-an incessantly barking dog, on a tactical team.
DSM: Besides agility, calmer nerves, greater fight drive, what other kinds of things do you want in a tactical dog that just...
BOGARDUS: Better courage and confidence. You know you're going to be working in closed places, very difficult dark places to operate in. Some dogs have a little trouble with darkness in general, so the dog would have to be able to do that. It can have no trouble at all with slick floors, gridding (where the dog can see through the grid).
I think all handlers have watched one dog or another moonwalk up a set of stairs where he could see through the grating. A tactical dog cannot be that sensitive. He's got to have a lot of balance. Not so much fight drive that he falls off the edge of the scale, but then again, he's got to have enough to be effective to work.
Locate, hang around
DSM: What do you see as the mission of the tactical dog as opposed to the patrol dog? What is his primary function?
Bogardus: The primary function is to locate suspects. Once the dog has located the suspect, the dog has to remain with that person. I think the training would have to require a minimum of a minute that you'd probably want to keep that dog with the person, barking and moving. Over a minute. Two or three minutes wouldn't hurt.
Not a success?
DSM: Again, you're not talking about a find-and-bite situation at all?
BOGARDUS: I'm pretty much steering clear of the biting stuff. In fact, I de–emphasize that quite a bit. I don't see any real value to it. I know my experience with special weapons teams always said that once my dog found the suspect, the team wanted me to get the dog out of the way so that they could operate tactically.
A handler-dog team has to remember that all activity is not revolving around them. They are augmenting, they are an add-on feature to the team. They are going along at the election or the option of the team leader who is fixed with the final responsibility to conclude that situation.
Police officers have to conclude situations where the risk of injury to anyone is minimized. Law enforcement doesn't factor injuries. Injuries in law enforcement to anyone are unacceptable, that's why they are not factored. It's different from the military standpoint where injuries are always factored. But in law enforcement, we can't afford to do that. That's why with the dog, if the dog were to engage someone and bite them, well gosh, that caused an injury, and if the injury was avoidable, then that doesn't work out to a successful operation.
DSM: So you really want to de-emphasize the biting aspect of the dog?
BOGARDUS: Yeah. I think all of this bite stuff in training and in service has been overused, misused, and abused by trainers and officers. We don't need so much biting. I think it's important that we train the dog how to fight, just like you would a boxer. You teach him how to do it. You teach a certain amount of finesse to a boxer. It's not just the punching or the slugging it out, you're teaching that person how to protect himself and how to finesse his way through a match.
DSM: You said that you think there are major problems in the use of police dogs today. What are some of the things that you see stemming from this?
Bogardus: I don’t think that we can point to any one thing that has caused the problem. I have to say with a lot of disappointment that most chiefs of police and police managers don't know a lot about police dogs. As a result, a lot of dependence is placed on the police officers to do what they think is best. When you start putting those kinds of loose sanctions on your entry-level police K-9 handlers, misunderstanding will always cause the dog's potential to be misused or abused. All I can do is point to some of the problems that we're having now with police dogs. Recently, there was a woman killed by a police dog in Florida.
Bad bites
DSM: Do you know what the circumstances were, or how it happened?
BOGARDUS: Yeah I do. It was a building search for a person inside of a house that had actually been abandoned. This woman turned out to be a transient known in the area. She had grown up there, she was an alcoholic, and was using this place as a crash pad.
In this case the agency had a find-and-bite policy. The dog was deployed to the house after a K-9 warning, he engaged this woman, bit her, the handler did not have the dog release until he could see her hands, and some of those kinds of things. As a result she was taken into custody, not given adequate medical treatment, and she bled to death.
Those are some of the areas that I had hoped to discuss with you, but we've got other things that are happening now. There are cases where handlers have put police dogs on a deaf person because the deaf person would not comply with their orders to exit a vehicle. I know of another case where five police officers put a dog on an epileptic having a grand mal seizure. These kinds of things. It's time to stop this kind of stuff; we can't be doing this stuff, guys.
Greater liability
DSM: Are you talking about individual incidents where there was an abuse of the tool or the weapon, or the judgment of the officers using it was bad, or are you talking about the 'training and the whole program being bad?
BOGARDUS: Well, all of the above.
DSM: It seems to me that what you're saying is that when the dogs are trained in the find-and-bite mode, that in itself is too dangerous to work with.
BOGARDUS: It's not only too dangerous, it's going to elevate an agency's liability profile. All of the biting that's going on in southern California right now is unnecessary. I look back on my early days where I was finding people. This was my department policy and I had to adhere to it. I was in a position where I was taught to do it, was expected to do it, and there was a consequence if I didn't do it.
I've evolved these opinions based on experience. First of all, I went back to my agency after all of this tough bite 'em stuff and I asked my own agency, are you sure about this? The reply essentially came back, "Keep it up son, we wouldn't want LAPD to be ahead of us on anything."
"Keep up with LAPD"
DSM: You mean terms of...
BOGARDUS: How many I could find and how many my dog could bite.
DSM: You realize that you're going to make a lot of people mad by saying all this biting in southern California is wrong.
BOGARDUS: Well, I know it. There’s going to be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth over all of this stuff, but I think if you analyze all of this mishmash with dogs biting people, you can only come to one conclusion, and it would have to be analyzed from the use of force perspective.
In California, we have our commission on POST, which is your Police Officers Standards and Training. POST sets the guidelines on virtually anything a police officer does; these are minimum standards. POST will reimburse an agency for training time and agencies receiving any funding of reimbursement money from POST is obliged by law actually to adhere to those guidelines.
Considerations of force
DSM: Right, but as I understand it, to this date POST has wanted to stay away from guidelines or standards for these K-9s.
BOGARDUS: Well, the use of K-9’s yeah, but they haven't stayed away from the perspective of the use of force. In California we have Unit Guide 26. I would suggest officers take a look at that and take a police dog as a use of force and fit it into Unit Guide 26.
DSM: For those people who don't have access to that, can you summarize it?
BOGARDUS: What it does is it spells out the guidelines on the use of force. That piece of work is actually entitled, "Use of Force, Effects of Force and Deadly Force," it will give you the guidelines on all of those things I've just mentioned. It will also give you what we call a "force continuum"; some agencies call it a "ladder of force," some call it a "barometer of force," but it means the same thing. It divides force that is used in law enforcement into three basic categories controlling force, injuring force, and deadly force.
Dog-Deadly force
DSM: Where do you see the dogs fitting into this?
BOGARDUS: The dogs can only fit into one place on that continuum, and that is deadly force. Now before everyone collapses, screams and wails-and I know they will-I would say the California Penal Code has Section 243 that gives a definition of serious bodily injury. Just by the fact that the dog's teeth are going to penetrate the skin, the highly-driven dog is going to bite as hard as he can and fight.
I generally think law enforcement would agree that the definition of "deadly force" is that force that would produce death or-and this is the major – "or"-serious bodily injury. If we've got a dog that can inflict that level of injury, and we look at the definition, then from that perspective the dog has to be regarded as "deadly force."
Comparisons of force
DSM: So, in essence, every time the dog is deployed, then you believe that deadly force is being deployed?
BOGARDUS: No. I do not suggest the use of a police dog is going to inflict death on every person that the dog bites. What I do say is that if you're going to use that dog, specific conditions must be present, because once the dog has engaged a person by biting, you've got "serious bodily injury."
Next, what officers don't stop to think about is the influence of shock. I've seen persons that have died because of shock. Shock is physiologically and psychologically induced, and for that reason what may be a minor dog bite to you could be the big megillah to the person bitten and they could cash in on you.
DSM. In the same way that when we use a side handle baton. if it's used incorrectly, of course, it can be regarded as deadly force.
Bogardus: You’ve hit a big thing right there. I've been a participant in some of these baton studies. Batons properly used minimize the potential for injury. Can we say the same thing about a police dog? I say no. According to a recent study done in Los Angeles, baton injuries require hospitalization or any medical treatment in only about 5.8 percent of the time. What about a police dog bite? That requires medical treatment 100 percent of the time.
Ranking the dog
DSM: Is that because of the seriousness of the injury, or because of the department's policy that when there is a dog bite, the person will receive medical treatment?
BOGARDUS: The ladder of force is injury driven. The greater the probability for the potential of injury is, the higher up on the ladder that technique, tool, or implement has got to go. When we look at a 9 mm pistol that a police officer may be carrying, we say that can inflict death, and if it doesn't hit a vital organ or something like that, it's going to produce great bodily injury.
With a baton, it's the same thing, but it's not quite as high unless the baton is improperly used. Moving on down, you've got other things that are available to the officers, but in any rate the use of force continuum is injury driven. That's why the police dog has to be up in that category, in the deadly force category, above batons.
"Cops have been lucky"
DSM: Are you aware of any case law that supports that? To my understanding on the ladder of force, dogs have been considered either level with or just below the use of the baton. Is there something new that has come out on that?
BOGARDUS: Are you talking about the Robinette case, Robinette v Barnes, the Tennessee case?
DSM: Yes.
BOGARDUS: Well, I'm not a lawyer and I'm not a judge, but I think that was just a bad decision. I don't think that law enforcement is going to be able to hang its hat on that at all. I don't think that agency would like to duplicate that. If an agency knew that their dogs were out there killing people, they would abandon that in a hot second. Dogs would not be a good idea at that point.
Case law, he said
DSM: Other than the case in Florida that you mentioned, do have any feeling for the numbers of how many deaths have been associated with police dogs?
BOGARDUS: You know really, I think that a lot of cops have been fairly lucky. I'm aware of only a few cases where a police dog has inflicted death. In Fort Myers, Fl., there was another case where a police dog killed the handlers baby daughter
We've got the Glendale case where it was a near-death case where the handler's baby daughter was bitten seriously, had her skull crushed and her nose nearly removed from her face by the dog. Then the mother is trying to get the baby away from the dog and was bitten pretty seriously.
But so far we've got the Robbinette case and we've got the McCloud case in Florida. In southern California a case is coming up that I think some eyes could be turned towards. It is the Tafoya case.
DSM: I'm not familiar with that.
BOGARDUS: That was with a suspect allegedly under the influence of something, probably an illicit drug, was bitten and this guy, it looks pretty clear to me, went into shock.
possible shut down
Then there's another case that's coming up in Huntington Beach, Ca., involving I think, I'm not really sure, a couple of agencies. It’s the Gorman case where a person was bitten by a police dog after a short vehicle chase. He plunged into the Santa Ana River, and because of some bad police work, he was pulled out, not rendered any assistance. and became hypothermic. Probably between that and the loss of blood, he died.
We've got some cases coming up that will, if they do anything, suggest to any reasonable law enforcement administrator that you better think about how these dogs are used, otherwise it could be expensive from a legal standpoint. Or, they have the potential of shutting down police dog work as we know it in the United States.
that second condition
DSM: Where do you see this heading? It seems to be that you're saying that because of the albeit small potential for serious consequences with the use of biting-dog's,' that where we're headed is having the dogs simply locate people and not bite at all.
BOGARDUS: You know, I'm not suggesting that there be absolutely no biting, or that we develop no – bite policies. What I am saying is that we need to tighten it up in law enforcement and identify those specific conditions under which the dog would be permitted, and not permitted, to bite.
Earlier, I only gave you one of the conditions under which a dog should be allowed to bite. The second one would be to apprehend a fleeing felony suspect who refuses to stop, and for whom the handler has probable cause to believe is armed and has committed violent felonies or poses a credible threat of violence to the officers or others.
"I'm a little bit afraid"
DSM: In other words, pretty much what I think most departments' limitations or policies would be toward the use of a firearm. Is that the same kind of situation you're thinking of?
BOGARDUS: Yeah, I mean we have some pretty stringent guidelines placed on the use of firearms. We have some guidelines that are fairly stringent on the use of baton, and on virtually every other police tool that is available. Why not dogs?
DSM: Well, I think that's where things are going.
BOGARDUS: That's exactly where they're going. If we don't do it, I'm like the next guy. I'm a little bit afraid. I'm in the position now that I enjoy working dogs and training dogs and I would hate to see the concept shut down because of a couple of bad apples that are not operating as police officers and they want to misuse the dog. It's always the bad apples, a very low percentage of people that give the majority of the good police officers the bad rap.
Caution! Dog Sports' staff advises caution in taking protection training information revealed here and applying to work in the field. Much of the information published here is for the use of experts. Novices should apply this information only under the supervision of knowledgeable and experienced trainers.
Click Here for a rebuttle to this article by Lou Castle
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