“Title 18
§ 5511.2. Police animals.
(a) Illegal to taunt police animals.—It shall be unlawful for any person to willfully or maliciously taunt, torment, tease, beat, kick or strike a police animal. Any person who violates any of the provisions of this subsection commits a felony of the third degree.”
Looks like a poorly written law that the police are using. I am thinking the law would apply while it is being used in investigating a crime, not during a football game.
The player is lucky he wasn’t taunting my dogs on the street. He’d have 200 pounds of German shepherd on him and I would make sure the dogs were defending me in self defense.
K-9 units do patrol type work, not just investigation after the crime. In my opinion, the law exists to prosecute someone that tries to prevent the dog from performing his job.
I doubt they will bring charges. They may use the media on the issue to try to get the team or NFL to apply a civil penalty to stop bad press.
Or they may just drop it from here, after bringing it to more people's attention of the criminal nature of the act.