In Los Angeles, even a police dog was recently taken into the center stage after news about it being a racist has surfaced and became a trending headline.
The said news started to emerge following a report published by the Police Assessment Report Center (PARC). The report has revealed that police dogs have only bitten African-American and Latino-American suspects during the first half of this year alone. Moreover, in the 2004 to 2012 report, it showed that the number of dog bites incidents in which ethnic minorities were bitten by police dogs has increased by roughly a third.
Incidentally, the report has further revealed that five of Los Angeles’ districts that are being dominated by black and Latino have an increased incidents of police dog bites than the other districts.
Even the U.S. Department of Justice has previously admitted that police in L.A. indeed targets people belonging minority groups. “African Americans, and to a lesser extent Latinos, are more likely to be stopped and/or searched than whites, even when controlling for factors other than race, such as crime rates,” the agency said.
“Apparently, the Los Angeles police primarily know what ethnicity a suspect is. Also, they are the one who usually decide when to deploy the canines. On the other hand, canines don’t know whether a suspect is a black or a white American. Thus, one can say that canines simply take orders or signals from the police during an attack,” an injury lawyer said.
Meanwhile, reports have confirmed that the head of the canine unit, Bruce Chase, was forced to review tactics and reduce the dog bite to arrest ratio following the report.
