By Holly Edwards, The Tennessean (Tennessee)
After controversy about two videotaped dog shootings by Midstate police officers, animal behavior specialists with the American Humane Association began two days of training yesterday on non-deadly methods of dealing with vicious dogs.
More than two dozen police and animal-control officers from throughout Middle Tennessee — including 10 officers from Hendersonville, where the most recent dog shooting occurred — were scheduled to attend.
“I don’t want to second-guess any police officer, but if you can avoid an encounter where you have to shoot somebody’s pet, that’s a good thing,” said Sgt. Ty Wilson of the White House, Tenn., Police Department, one of five officers from that department at the training. “We’re duty-bound to protect the public from vicious dogs, and we need any help we can get on how to defuse that kind of encounter.”
In addition to learning to deal with vicious dogs, Wilson said his department hopes to avoid the “media blast” surrounding the Cookeville dog shooting in January 2003 and the dog shooting in Hendersonville last month.
During yesterday’s session, animal behaviorist Penny Scott-Fox told the group that the key to knowing whether a dog will bite lies in understanding its body language.
Pointing to projected images of dogs in a variety of stances, she said “soft and squishy” dogs with blinking eyes, wiggly bodies, and ears folded back are safe. Stiff, rigid dogs with the whites of their eyes showing, ears erect and teeth bared are probably not.
“You can just feel it when a dog’s about to bite,” said Scott-Fox, a trainer with the American Humane Association. “Their eyes get really hard, and you know what you’re in for.”
Safe dogs, on the other hand, are “loose, wiggly and soft. They snake across the floor, and they look soft and squishy,” she said.
Animal behavior training is a growing trend in law enforcement, and all new police recruits in the state are required to complete a two-hour course on dealing with aggressive animals, said Beth Denton, spokeswoman for the state Department of Safety, which oversees law-enforcement training.
The statewide training was launched in 2003 after the Cookeville dog shooting, she said.
Several officers attending yesterday’s event said they learned all about dealing with aggressive people when they went through the police academy years ago but were given no information about dealing with aggressive animals.
“This kind of training is a growing trend because we’re getting a lot more calls now where we have to deal with animals,” said Sgt. Jim Ring of the White House Police Department. “Almost everyone has a pet of some sort.”
In the most recent dog shootings in Cookeville and Hendersonville, police officials determined that officers followed proper procedures.
However, Kerri Burns, a former police officer and trainer for the American Humane Association, said it’s rarely necessary to kill an aggressive dog to stop it.
“In a small percentage of cases, the dog just won’t stop,” she said. “It lunges at you, it might be a trained attack dog, and it just won’t stop.”
Before using lethal force, Burns suggested officers try several other measures first.
Studies have shown that more than 90 percent of vicious-dog encounters can be defused using the humane association’s method of “stop, drop and roll,” she said.
The first step is to stop and assess the dog’s body language, then drop your eyes so you’re not staring down at the dog. Direct eye contact is a canine method of communicating aggression, Burns said.
After looking away, officers should gently roll their shoulder, slowly turning away until they’re standing sideways to the dog.
If the dog is still in attack mode, the next step is to say, “Stop, sit down,” in a deep, low, loud voice. If the dog continues to advance, officers should try pepper spray or putting a nightstick in the dog’s mouth.
Taser guns can also be used, Burns said, but only when an animal control officer is standing nearby with a catchpole. Otherwise, she said, the dog will have to be repeatedly zapped to keep it under control.
Dogs become aggressive when they feel trapped and scared, said Scott-Fox, and easing a tense confrontation with an angry dog involves giving that dog a way out of the situation.
The key is to analyze each part of a dog’s body language, and then put everything together to look at the dog as a whole picture, she said.
“A lot of times, dogs just don’t understand what’s expected of them and most aggression occurs out of fear,” she said. “Most dogs, given the choice, will run away.”
Officer Wilson of White House said he has had to use pepper spray several times on vicious dogs. An officer in his department had to shoot a dog last year when it attacked police as they arrested its owner.
“It breaks your heart to shoot an animal,” he said. “But if it’s a choice between the dog or me, you got to protect yourself.”
The story so far
Two videotaped dog shootings in Tennessee have drawn national attention and prompted the American Humane Association to offer dog behavior training for police and animal control officers.
The most recent shooting occurred in Hendersonville on Oct. 12 when a policeman shot a Chow-German Shepherd mix dog that had been acting aggressively toward an animal control officer. A police review board concluded this month that the officer was justified in shooting the dog.
Another shooting occurred in Cookeville on Jan. 1, 2003 when James and Pamela Smoak, along with their 17-year-old son, and two dogs, a terrier-bulldog mix named Patton and a puppy named Cassie, were returning to their North Carolina home after spending a few days in Nashville.
Their car was pulled over by the Tennessee Highway Patrol and two Cookeville police officers on I-40 near Cookeville’s exit 287.
Police stopped the family after a motorist reported that a green station wagon had passed by at high speed and that money had been thrown from the window. What really happened, an investigation later found, was that James Smoak left his wallet on top of his car after getting gas. Near Mt. Juliet, the wallet fell onto the roadway and $440 in cash swirled in the air.
Suspecting a crime, police ordered the couple and their son out of the car at gunpoint and handcuffed them. The action was captured by a dashboard video camera in the trooper’s cruiser.
Minutes after the stop, Patton jumped out and ran toward the officers — some say playfully, others say aggressively — and Cookeville Officer Eric Hall shot the dog once in the head with a shotgun.
In a settlement announced this month in U.S. District Court, the Smoaks will be paid $77,500 to settle a lawsuit against the city of Cookeville and Hall for the mistaken police stop and dog shooting.