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Springing to action

by KEITH COUSINS/kcousins@cdapress.com
| July 12, 2014 9:00 PM

COEUR d'ALENE - Two other dogs were shot by police officers in Idaho this year, before Wednesday's officer-involved shooting of a dog at Java on Sherman.

Stacey Coleman, executive director of the National Canine Research Council, said the majority of discharges from police firearms in the United States involve dogs. With that in mind, members of the NCRC, a national organization that works to "preserve the human-canine bond," became interested in finding a solution.

"We know that the public awareness (of these incidents) is increasing and their tolerance is decreasing," Coleman said. "It is a tragedy and it leads to public scrutiny."

When a pet dog is shot and killed by an on-duty police officer, Coleman said several things happen. First and foremost, she said the bond between a human and a pet dog is "irreparably broken." This leads dog owners to start to distrust law enforcement officers, which Coleman said inevitably hurts the community.

"We're very much interested in developing and moving toward a day where we have responsible pet ownership communities and part of that is law enforcement. They're part of the mechanism to enforce the laws that ensure responsible pet ownership," Coleman said. "But if there's a distrust between dog owners and law enforcement, there's a barrier to creating those communities where dogs and humans live safely and humanely together."

In 2011, NCRC worked with the Department of Justice to develop a written manual for law enforcement agencies around the nation. The manual was made available on the Department of Justice website, and Coleman said it quickly became the most frequently downloaded item on the site.

Included in the manual was a questionnaire that asked if there was anything else the organization could do. The response was that training videos would be appreciated.

"So we started creating a video series to fill that desire amongst law enforcement to be better," Coleman said. "We know police don't want to shoot dogs; we're just sure of that. Dogs are a very important part of our society, our culture and our families. So many police officers own dogs and we believe fully that cops don't want to shoot dogs."

The video series gives law enforcement agencies tools that Coleman hopes will allow officers to think about alternatives to defuse a tense situation with a dog.

"We try to go from beginning to end," Coleman said. "If the dog does aggress on you, we provide some options of pretty handy and readily available things that most officers have to put between themselves and the dog."

Coleman said her organization does not expect officers to be behavioral experts when it comes to dogs, but that the tools it provides can familiarize officers with the topic.

"They don't have time to go through a checklist on what to do when they encounter a dog," Coleman said. "The options we are giving are very simple things."

After the shooting in Coeur d'Alene, Coleman said her office sent both the written material and videos to the police department. While she said it is too early to tell if the office will respond to the information, she said the agencies that have in the past have been "overwhelmingly grateful."

"This is an aspect of training that they haven't been given and hasn't been made a priority until now," Coleman said.