There are a couple of news item going around at the moment about police departments in the U.S. buying body armour - costing around $500 each - for their police dogs, who are used for various tasks including drug busts and searching buildings.
In Glendale, California, an anonymous donor reacted to the death last year of a K-9 from the Long Beach Police Department by donating just under $4,000 to supply vests for four German Shepherds. One of them, 21-month-old Yudy, was responsible last week for turning a traffic stop into a half a million dollar opium bust. Meanwhile in Rocky Hill, Connecticut, two dogs will be fitted out with bulletproof vests donated to the police department last week by a non-profit organisation called Connecticut Vest-a-Dog.
There are a number of these Vest-a-Dog organisations throughout the U.S., inspired by the original Vest-a-Dog set up in 1999 by a then eleven-year-old from Oceanside, California, Stephanie Taylor. She started raising funds after hearing about a police dog being killed in the line of duty. She went on to appear on Oprah and in People magazine and inspire a lot of other young people and similarly-oriented groups such as Pennies to Protect Police Dogs, Inc.
Interestingly, the next year the St Petersburg Times ran an article on Taylor, revealing that her mother was in fact the national sales manager for a company making bulletproof vests for K-9s and that there was a clear conflict of interest involved; her mother denied the charges even though she admitted it didn’t look great.
So how useful is the body armour at preventing stabbings and shootings and how needed is it? It was difficult to come up with figures on how many police dogs are killed or injured while on the job. Research by Eden & Ney Associates, a Canadian company that trains police dog handlers, came up with 39 K-9s killed on active duty between 1980-2000.
Charlie Mesloh, a former handler and trainer, wrote in a FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin a few years back that K-9 deaths are rare and that “no reports of a canine ballistic vest saving the life of a police animal have occurred in the United States”. He recommended studies be undertaken into how effective the body armour actually is; I did a quick search on the internet but wasn’t able to find any.
For those dog handlers who have taken up the opportunity of using it, some think it can be hot and awkward for the dog and should only be used sparingly, while others have welcomed the versatility and protection it has brought to the dogs.