Working Like a Dog: A Mixed-Method Study of Public Support for Police Dogs and Their Utilities

ABSTRACT

Working dogs play integral roles across many human workplaces. This is no exception in the criminal justice system, and policing more specifically, where police dogs are used in various capacities. Many questions remain, however, regarding the public’s perceptions of dogs in different working contexts. Drawing upon data from a sample of Canadian and American adults (n = 201) obtained via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, the present research explores public perceptions of working dogs’ utilities, with an emphasis on police dogs. The findings reveal that while participants overwhelmingly supported working dogs in health and wellbeing contexts, they expressed more mixed perceptions regarding police dogs. The findings also reveal that police dogs’ utilities are related to participants’ overall support for police dogs, but that the specific relationship varies as a function of the utility. Amidst growing concerns regarding the use of police dogs, these findings may help police organizations incorporate evidence-based decision-making related to the deployment of police dogs moving forward.

KEYWORDS:

• Canines
• human–animal interaction
• perception
• police dogs
• working dogs

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the reviewers for their comments regarding this article. The lead author also thanks the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for their financial support.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 “Police dogs” may also be referred to as “police canines/K9s.”

2 While the specific breed of police dog may vary by region, police organization, and intended use, they tend to share intelligent, obedient, and versatile characteristics necessary for the rigors of policing (e.g., Belgian Malinois, English Bloodhounds, and German Shepherds; see Allsopp, 2015; Chapman, 1990; Dogs for Law Enforcement, 2022).

3 Few incidents are arguably more salient than May 3rd, 1963, when fire hoses and police dogs were deployed on peaceful protesters in Birmingham, Alabama, effectively shaping the rhetoric surrounding Black Americans and the Civil Rights Movement for decades to come (Spratt, 2008).

4 Such formalization may emphasize a greater deference that is given to police dogs. For example, assaulting a police dog may lead to more severe legal consequences in some jurisdictions relative to assaulting a non-police dog.

5 The subsamples of participants across the open-ended questions vary slightly from the total sample to account for the omission of blank responses.

6 For example, citing a history of police violence among communities of color, two California lawmakers recently introduced a bill (AB 742) that would ban the use of police dogs in many of the heightened interactions discussed in the present research (Lin, 2023).

7 For example, one of the statements used in the creation of the bite variable was: “It is acceptable for police dogs to bite people who are running from police.” It is possible that participants’ responses to this statement may hinge on the situation surrounding why a person ran from police, which is not included in the statement.