The leash on city police dogs is getting shorter. A city police dog's attack on an officer earlier this month has raised a number of issues to which the police department and City Council must respond. The sooner the better.
Two people pulled the German Shepherd off Officer Rick Ruggieri, who was seriously injured from bites on the forehead and wrist. The dog was then stabbed and shot and killed. The incident occurred at the police firing range near Lynchburg Regional Airport.
Among the issues raised in the dog's attack on Ruggieri, one of the department's five handlers, is whether the city needs attack dogs or whether more docile animals that track drugs and explosives would be more appropriate for a city of this size.
The K-9 program has had at least four biting incidents in the recent past. The most recent incident occurred last October when two girls were attacked on Craddock Street. Police were attempting to serve a search warrant and the K-9 unit was called. Ruggieri lost control of his dog, which bit a 10-year-old girl on the knee and a 13-year-old girl wearing a thick coat. She was not injured.
A 23-year-old woman was attacked by a dog at the Greenfield Apartments in June 1999. She had to have 15 staples to close wounds from the bite.
Does the city K-9 unit need such aggressive attack dogs, which are good for crowd control? How often do police here face unruly crowds that warrant the presence of snarling, attack dogs?
The greatest benefits of the dogs come from searching for missing persons or violent suspects. Or in searching for drugs or explosives, for which they have been trained. But none of those missions require an attack dog.
Less feisty Labrador or Golden Retrievers could fulfill those duties in a much less menacing - and safer - fashion. Even if police determine they need an attack-type dog, they only need one. They don't need the five that they have…or make that four.
Another nagging issue raised by this story is the time it took to get the full story to the public. Without the help of a former city police officer, whose letter appears below, the full story might not have emerged at all. For an agency that depends on public confidence as much as the police department does, that's disgraceful. Why didn't Major Jack Lewis, the department's spokesman, release all the details of the attack for the first story, which appeared Feb. 14? What was he covering up?
By the next day, Lewis had every opportunity to provide the whole story, but he elected not to. One of the people who came to Ruggieri's aid was Eugene Pennix, a Lynchburg firefighter who was training for a job as the animal warden in Amherst County. Pennix and others were asked by the police department not to comment on the attack.
Who else was involved at the firing range incident? Lewis wouldn't say. It turns out that the other person involved was Officer Karen Carter, a new handler. She and Ruggieri were in the process of attempting to load the dog, Eiko, into a vehicle to return him to his Pennsylvania vendor.
You would think that public officials who are answerable to the public would learn that the best policy relating to what is admittedly a bad news story is one that provides all the details from the beginning. If reporters suspect the whole story has not emerged, as Ron Brown of The News & Advance did in this case, they will hang with it until it does come to light.
All public officials can learn something from this incident.
The record shows that Lewis intentionally covered up the fact that Karen Carter was one of the officers involved in the attack. Why?
The answer appears to be he did not want to reveal that she is the daughter of Capt. C.T. Carter who supervises the K-9 unit. As her supervisor, Capt. Carter would have the authority to review the performance of those in the unit. A good performance review could mean a nice pay raise.
Lewis pointed out later, however, that Capt. Carter does not have the final word on supervision or on performance review.
That may be, but the appearance of a father supervising his daughter in the police department - or in any city department - is not an ingredient of good government. It's called nepotism. Mayor Carl Hutcherson put his finger on it when he said that any appearance of nepotism could have an impact on public confidence.
"You want to be clear at all levels," he said. "You want to make sure everything is done on a very fair basis."
The city doesn't have a formal nepotism policy, which it needs. Councilman Julian Adams is likely to change that. "If there is no policy, we should undertake developing one," he said last week.
"It's asking for trouble for parents or relatives to be involved in performance reviews," he said, suggesting that is not a good practice for public agencies.
He's right.
The police department and other city officials can learn from this incident, which was tragic for the handlers and the dog involved - if they will. A more open agency can build public confidence. An agency that prohibits nepotism can build public confidence. And safer dogs will be more acceptable to the public that has every right to be concerned for public safety in their presence today.
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