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Posted: 11-06-2002 16:46 Post subject: Racist dogs?

I found this strange story... IMO, it's nuts.

Racist K-9 McKEES ROCKS, PA. -- A police dog is accused of racial profiling.

The five-year-old German shepherd named Dolpho is the lone police dog in McKees Rocks, Pa.

Dolpho can tell the difference between marijuana, heroin and cocaine. But a borough councilwoman says the dog targets blacks and should be put to death.

Dolpho made a mistake last week. While a K-9 officer wrestled with a drug suspect, a button on his belt inadvertently opened a door to the K-9 wagon.

The dog bolted out and bit a nine-year-old boy on the leg, and not the suspect.

The boy is black.

Police say the dog became confused because there was a lot of noise and yelling.

The incident was brought up during a council meeting on Monday. No decision was made about Dolpho's fate.

Posted: 11-06-2002 17:42 Post subject:

Whether the dog is racist or not Very Happy

surely it shouldn't get confused during an arrest? Sounds like a poorly trained police dog to me!

Posted: 11-06-2002 18:08 Post subject:

Seem to remember that there were a flurry of stories coming out of the US about 10-15 years ago, about so-called "white dogs" which were trained by racists to attack blacks - exactly how they were trained seemed to be unclear (can a dog be trained to distinguish between, say, light-skinned Negros and heavily-tanned Caucasians?) There was even a cinema film, "White Dog" with just that plot idea, which seems to have sunk without trace.
A quick googling doesn't turn up any real stories about such dogs, so I think we can consign 'racist dogs' to the UL bin, until some evidence of them actually surfaces. It sounds like this particular case was one of a confused and badly-trained animal going for the nearest target.

Posted: 11-06-2002 19:13 Post subject:

there was a couple of these stories about racicst police dogs in the UK in the last couple of years too...........in between the ones about racist police people..... Sad

Posted: 11-06-2002 21:01 Post subject:

Posted: 11-06-2002 21:53 Post subject:

According to the article the police officer stated that the dog got confused with the yelling. I wonder if the boy was yelling and that contributed to the dog attacking him...?

Posted: 11-06-2002 22:08 Post subject:

Arn't dogs colour blind, I seem to remember reading somewhere that dogs can only see in black and white and shades of grey.

Posted: 11-06-2002 22:24 Post subject:

Just to note that the movie White Dog was a late (1982) work by
the director Sam Fuller. It surfaced three or four years ago on UK
tv, when Channel Four did a Fuller retrospective. I didn't see it.

But remembering a time when terrestrial tv did director retrospectives
sounds like another world now! Sad

Posted: 11-06-2002 22:57 Post subject:

Posted: 11-06-2002 23:03 Post subject:

My Dobermann, who I discussed on the Fortean Pets thread, adored black people, but hated Chinese people.

His sister hated Airedales, and went for a greyhound in the vet who'd done absolutely nothing to upset her when someone came in with an airedale but I suppose that's another story...

PS The dogs were both rescue dogs; we got them at 5 months old, so we don't know their history in case any of you thought they'd been taught this!

Posted: 11-06-2002 23:03 Post subject:

Can dogs be racist? - YES

When I lived in Kenya, some dogs owned by Asians and Whites would growl at every Black person they came across, welcome visitors or otherwise. Yet the same dogs would be submissive (head down, tail wagging) when an Asian or White approached them, even if they were strangers. It didn't take a genius to work out that the dogs just reflected their owners views on race, but hadn't mastered the art of two-facedness.

Nuff said

Posted: 12-06-2002 02:38 Post subject:

Posted: 12-06-2002 05:18 Post subject:

If the kid was making noise or attracted the dogs attention, then I would say that the dog went after him because it assumed the cop had the other guy in hand..

The kid might have run away from the dog when he saw it and also triggered it's prey instinct and training at a bad time.

Posted: 12-06-2002 10:28 Post subject:

I think dogs have so bad eyesight that they wouldn't be able to distinguish between the races. But they would be able to if they smelled differently. In this case I just think the dog panicked or such though.

BTW animals can of course be racists.

Posted: 14-06-2002 03:11 Post subject: