Police DOG Suspended Over Charges Of RACISM [Racist Dog Alert?]

AP ^ | 2/4/04

[11th Earl of Mar]

Pa. Police Dog Suspended; Bit Black Child

ASSOCIATED PRESS

MCKEES ROCKS, Pa. (AP) - A police dog has been suspended while investigators try to determine whether the animal has something against black children.

The dog, a German shepherd named Dolpho, was cleared two years ago of attacking a child because he was black. But Dolpho was removed from duty on Monday after biting another black child.

Dolpho attacked a 14-year-old black girl on Jan. 28 during a crime-prevention demonstration at a school but did not break the youngster's skin. The girl's parents said a white student petted the dog without incident before he attacked their daughter.

In 2002, town officials ordered a two-month investigation to determine if Dolpho was singling out blacks while on patrol after the dog escaped from police vehicle and bit a 9-year-old black boy playing nearby. The dog was taken off duty, retrained for two months and returned to the force.

City Councilwoman Wanda Jones Dixon, who is black, complained about the dog in 2002 and renewed her request that the animal be retired from the police force or put to sleep.

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[GSWarrior]

I saw that movie on TV years ago. I doubt it will never be shown again. Some would claim it was racist, but I am not one of them.

[smith288]

But I have seen some dogs that aren't even trained to do it. They just pick up the hostility felt by their masters towards a certain type person, and know to show hostility towards them as well.

Bull pucky. Its directly related to the dog inexperience towards people who look different from their master. Kids are the same way.

Take a kid from a white neighborhood that has never talked to black and people and the kid will say "Hey dad, this guy is brown...Why are you brown mister?" Embarassing for the father as much as it is for a dog owner who shows aggresiveness with something new.

[-YYZ-]

Thanks for posting the pic. This KOTH episode sprang into my mind immediately on reading the headline for this thread. What a great show, one of the most consistently funny on TV.

[machman]

I agree with alot of personal stories on this thread in that dogs remember things, especially bad things that have been done to them.

A friend of mine had a sweet old mutt, never harmed a fly, was freindly to everybody. I was at his house one day, and another friend of ours came in the front door, the dog was sleeping across the room under a chair, this dog had seen this guy 100's of times. The guy coming in the door was wearing a brand new pair of cowboy boots, something I had never seen him wear. He walked in, stood just inside the door and was talking, it couldn't have been more than 15 seconds, and the dog raced across the room and attacked his feet, tearing a big hole in his blue jean pant legs. It was the only time that dog ever did anything like that before or after. All we could think was that somebody, a neighbor perhaps, had kicked the dog wearning similar boots, it was the only thing we could think of.

I also had a dog that we got from the pound we recently had to get rid of, He was very friendly to adults, but was very agressive with children, it seemed that the shorter you were, the more of a threat he thought you could be. It was either some small kids had hurt him in the past, or just that he viewed somebody "small' as a threat to his position in the pecking order.

[EggsAckley]

We had a German Shepherd once who was prejudiced against uniforms. Any uniforms. Milkman, meter reader, cops, even Boys/Girl Scouts!! It was very weird.

[ican'tbelieveit]

I usually find that when "misunderstanding" is found in these situations, the person was looking for a "misunderstanding."

Several things come to mind, such as the situation with "slave drives" on computers in California. Or the slave for a day situation somewhere in the south.

[Texaggie79]

That is only some cases. For instance, my grandfathers dog stayed at the store in the bad part of town. I would say it saw more black people than white. Yet it still was hostile to them.

[AnAmericanMother]

Mine actually likes the brown truck - and all the other UPS men she meets (and the postman - even when he delivers the mail to our door). It's just the one poor guy she can't stand. Maybe he called her a Naughty Name, I dunno.

She likes the brown truck 'cause she's a Brown Dog.

[retrokitten]

That is exactly what I thought of, too!!! LMBO!!

[smith288]

bah.... I have never known a dog that takes on emotions of an owner and direct it towards the subject of the emotion. I have only heard of dogs that take the emotion of the owner and reflect it back to the owner.

I wouldnt know how a dog would know the complexities of racism. An owner screaming racists slurs at a black person on tv isnt going to correlate over to the dog to look at a tv to see the subject matter.

My dog groweled at a black cable guy and although I was slightly embarassed, I told the guy, "My dog is sketchy with unfamiliar people (including black people)". Im not racist. She just doesnt know what to think of a dark individuals.

[ican'tbelieveit]

What a sweet baby.

[AnAmericanMother]

She is a darling - a wild, bouncy, grinning darling but a darling nonetheless.

I have her in Agility training to try to burn off some of that energy, but she's just as frisky at the end of class as she is at the beginning. Another smallish "active" Lab (a black one named Tornado) and a big bouncy Golden named RBI are her Agility Class partners in crime. The three of them could wreck a junkyard with a rubber hammer, and they really give it the old college try in the dog yard.

[Texaggie79]

It's quite simple really. A dog wishes to please it's owner. A dog is also very protective of their owner.

Surely a dog has enough intelligence to see it's master's reactions to certain types of people.

Heck, I know a friend of my mom's who was single and hated men because she had been dumped so many times. And her dog would bark and go after all men. She would have to keep it on a leash and hold it back when out in public, from men.

Just like a dog that knows it's master wants it to go for racoons, it will ignore squirrels because it can comprehend that master wants racoon not squirrel.

[Ichneumon]

So maybe they just notice something different and become alarmed. I once put on a brown wig (I have blond hair)and a dog who knew me well barked & barked in alarm. Go figure....

I suspect that's the primary reason for such things.

One of my dachshunds has the same problem, and if it were a matter of "picking it up from the owner", the other one should have it too, but she doesn't. (And I don't have any issues myself in that regard.)

It's probably significant that the dog with the problem is also clinically neurotic about a lot of things (i.e. there's a crack in the floor she's afraid to cross), so that could explain why she's more likely to react negatively to people who appear "different" to her in some way.

[mtbopfuyn]

We had one that hated Mexican men. Never understood where that came from unless someone did something to her while we weren't home.

[Ichneumon]

Is this even possible, I thought dog saw in B&W or at least that is what I was told.

Since we can distinguish black people from white people on a B&W TV, I'm sure dogs have no trouble either. Light/dark distinctions show up just fine in B&W.

[Ichneumon]

I know several people besides me who have dogs that ignore the postman and Fed-Ex man but hate the UPS Man. Why?

They hire serial killers. (Just kidding.)

[smith288]

So me, my family and some other people I know are racist? I think more dogs that reflect an owners racism is lesser than dogs that just dont know how to react to a person who looks different than they have ever seen. My opinion though.

[July 4th]

Dolpho...short for Adolf?

[jimt]

My dog seems to dislike both blacks and hispanics, which means the majority of people in my neighborhood. Once introduced she's fine, but she does start with an attitude.

One middle school hispanic boy who thought it would be fun to reach into our car and poke my daughter got the crap scared out of him. He couldn't get his arm out of the car fast enough, and virtually levitated backwards about four feet. Of course, a 110 pound black dog with very large white teeth and an attitude would scare about anybody.