POLICE DOG

A police dog is a dog that is trained specifically to assist police and similar law-enforcement personnel with their work. Police dogs are often referred to by the term K9, which is a homophone of the term canine, a word that generally refers to the dog and its relatives.

In many jurisdictions the intentional injury or killing of a police dog is a felony, subjecting the perpetrator to harsher penalties than the statutes embodied in local animal cruelty laws. A growing number of forces outfit dogs with bulletproof vests (and some even go so far as to make the dogs sworn officers, with their own police badges and IDs. Furthermore, a police dog killed in the line of duty is often given a full police funeral. This liaison set in motion the first positive effort to convince the Home Office and Police Forces throughout the UK of the true worth of a well-trained dog. With Darbyshire's enthusiasm and idea's and Simpson leadership and influence, the Surrey police headquarters at Mountbrown in Guildford became the epicentre of breeding and training of the modern police dog. Within a short space of time the Surrey police dogs were touring the country giving demonstrations to other police forces, whilst at the same time, Sir Joseph Simpson was bringing his influence to bear on the Kennel Club and other senior police officers. Slowly, they began to understand and appreciate the potential value of the police service dog.

After a careful study of the work carried out by Harry Darbyshire, Sir Joseph Simpson reached a number of important conclusions on which further developments and progress were to be based. The most far-reaching of these was to discard the accepted notion that all police dogs should be divided into two classes, tracking dogs and criminal work patrol dogs. The evidence pointed to the fact that some breeds of dogs were capable of being trained to carry out both disciplines. He also concluded that there should be a more rigorous selection process when accepting dogs for police work, the first step towards the notion that the police service should breed their own animals in an attempt to produce the ideal police dog.

1946 also saw the formation of a small dog section within the Metropolitan Police, an important event in itself as the Metropolitan Police, serving the Capitol City and with the largest deployment of manpower has always been an influential component in the policing tactics of the UK as a whole.