USING DOGS AS A TOOL OF RACIST REPRESSION

USING DOGS AS A TOOL OF RACIST REPRESSION

LIKE MANY aspects of modern policing, police dogs have their historical roots in slavery and colonialism.

Cuban bloodhounds were tools in the hands of professional slave catchers for recapturing and brutalizing fleeing slaves, and instruments of psychological terror to prevent others from trying to escape. From slavery to Jim Crow to the era of mass incarceration, attack dogs have been a continuous feature of anti-Black violence.

It’s still the case today that police dogs are used disproportionately to maul and terrorize people of color. The Ferguson police department’s apartheid policy of dog attacks for Black people only isn’t unique.

A 2013 report similarly found that 100 percent of the victims of police dog bites in Los Angeles County in the first six months of that year were Black or Latino.

The stark numbers show that no progress has been made in LA since former Police Chief Daryl Gates and the LAPD were sued by the ACLU and NAACP in 1991 for unleashing K9 units against the Black and Brown communities of Los Angeles, mauling more than 900 people over the course of three years.

Meanwhile, a 2016 report by the Center for Policing Equity, using data collected from 11 large, unnamed police departments, found that police were more likely to use dogs against Black suspects (as they were more likely to use force in general).