St. Petersburg Police Department’s K9 Unit, Class Number Five. May, 1981.
St. Petersburg Police Officer Richard Hellman and K9 Shane, the department’s first K9 team. 1967.
The K9 Corps: The Use Of Dogs In Police Work From the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology by William F. Handy, Marilyn Harrington and David J. Pittman.
The first known instance of dogs
being used for police work dates back to the fourteenth century in France. Dogs were used to guard naval installations and docks at St. Malo. Their work for this par- ticular task was discontinued in 1779 when one of the dogs accidentally killed a young naval officer out after curfew. In 1895, dogs were used in Paris to
control gangs that were creating police problems. The Germans, noting the suc- cess of the dogs controlling gangs, began using them in 1896. It was during this era that Germany began the first scientific and planned development in breeding, training, and utilizing dogs for police work. Scientists involved in the experi- ments selected the German Shepherd as the breed best suited for police work. The Doberman Pinscher was the second choice. In 1920, a school was established at
Greenheide, Germany for the training of police canines, setting the criteria for the standard in police dogs. The dogs were trained in basic obedience, tracking and searching. Prior to the establishment of the
Greenheide school, the city of Ghent, Belgium was recognized as the world leader in the use of police dogs. It was from this city that the use of police dogs spread to the United States. The corps in Ghent, developed in 1899, started with Belgian Sheepdogs (also known as the Belgian Shepherd or Chien de Berger
42 THE NEW BARKER St. Petersburg Police K9 in-training. 1967.
Belge) and Wolfhounds. It was the first school to train the handler and dog as a team. In 1907, the police commissioner of
New York City, General Bringham, sent George Wakefield to Ghent to study the canine operations. Wakefield returned to New York with six trained Belgian Sheepdogs for operational and breeding purposes. By 1911, New York had 16 dogs used for patrolling the residential district of Long Island. From 11pm until 7am, the dogs ran loose in the neighbor- hoods assigned to their handlers. Upon encountering anyone other than a man in uniform, the dog would knock the stranger to the ground, stand on him, and bark until his police handler arrived. The New York City police dogs
were trained as puppies to regard a per- son in policeman’s uniform as friendly, and in any other dress as hostile. Only uniformed officers were allowed near the puppies for feeding and exercising pur- poses. As part of the training, a man attired in street clothes would enter the room where the puppies were and tease them in various ways. The treatment would continue daily until the dogs showed signs of aggressiveness toward anyone not wearing a uniform. Then, the dogs were trained to “throw” a man to the ground by wrapping their front paws around his legs and dragging him down. Obviously, there were issues with the
practice of grounding every person who ventured onto the streets after 11pm. Many innocent victims were injured. Constant complaints from irate citizens placed the use of police dogs in disfavor with the constantly changing police administration. Despite this, the police canine unit continued to grow. In the early 1920s, a detective was
demonstrating to a group of New York City parade goers how the police dogs were trained to attack a man even under gunfire. To prove his point he drew a revolver loaded with blanks and began firing at the dog. When the dog tried to attack the detective and was restrained by its handler (both men were in plain- clothes), a bystander (another plainclothes police officer), thought he was witnessing a culprit trying to kill a police dog.
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