Friday, March 17, 2017

Only fools rush in...or face the consequences.

As many of you know, part of the work I do is responding to cases where police officers use deadly force against pets. Some cases are clearly justified, and some...not so much. Often my involvement revolves around one of two focus points: reactive assessment of what has already happened, or proactive training and advice towards preventing future negative incidents.

Looking at these two main topics, there is an underlying theme: Change. We need to effect change across practices in the policing system that affect interactions between police officers and domestic pets. It's not that the system is somehow inherently flawed: instead, we have deficits in practices that need to be brought up to date, recognizing changing expectations. We, within the Law Enforcement community, need to recognize the need for change in our interactions with animals, and we need to accept that change.

One of the basic principles of human behavior is that desires lead to beliefs, and beliefs lead to action. Some critics have deeply held beliefs that conflict with our own. Sometimes those beliefs conflict with scientific and legal principles. But people tend to base their opinions on belief rather than on fact. Changing belief is hard. If we want to meaningfully change actions, our accepted practices, we need to change the beliefs that drive them. To do that we need to accept that belief has to adapt over time to drive our actions and to allow us to adapt to changing expectations.

The belief that a police officer must complete his/her mission, no matter what, is deeply ingrained. We start down a path of action, and we tend to continue on that path, even when the situation changes mid-stride. Inertia is the tendency for an object in motion to remain in motion. When we, as officers, set out to do our job we can get completion inertia. We tend to get blindered, focused on completing the mission now. But we have to learn to ask: is this particular matter so important that it must be done now? Can we accomplish our mission with a little more compassion and a little less inertia?

Sometimes the completion inertia mindset is justified. When a violent bad guy needs to be arrested, the officer cannot, should not, just walk away if there is resistance. A central duty of a police officer is to catch bad guys and try and keep them from harming the good guys. Done deal.

The law reflects this. Statutes particularly state that a police officer has no duty to retreat when confronted with resistance. The word "NO" doesn't really enter into the police mindset when it comes from other than the officer themselves.

Once upon a not so distant past, resistance of any sort precipitated predictable force. One of the basic lessons I learned as a rookie Patrolman: the level of resistance given precipitated a directly proportional ass beating. Resist arrest mildly and get bounced around. Spit on an officer and risk a good thrashing. Hurt an officer and you would inevitably go to jail by way of the hospital.  Shoot an officer, fatally or not, and you better have funeral plans.

But in dealing with animals and animal encounters, we may have to step back to move forward. Animals, domestic pets, don’t understand that we have a mission to complete. They have their own mission, and those missions may conflict. Officers may fail to recognize that these animals are not “resisting” their actions, but that they are behaving in predictable ways based on their perception of the world. We need to learn to be able to shift in mid-stream to recognize those conflicts and avoid them, rather than letting inertia carry us forward, blindly, meeting force with force.

The base criteria used to justify action is what the officer believed at the time of the deployment of force. Officers state that they believed they were at risk of death or severe bodily injury. They believed that they had no option other than deadly force.

Recently there was a human shooting during a drug arrest/foot pursuit, and the body camera clearly showed the fleeing suspect turn, gun in hand and point the gun directly at the pursuing officer. That was a clean, sadly unavoidable shooting. No one can expect a police officer to get killed or wounded by a violent, armed suspect. The desire of the officer is to go home safely, the belief (reasonable here) is that the officer’s life is in immediate jeopardy, and the action in this case was to use reasonable and understandable force.

The stated belief of imminent death is regularly invoked in use of force incidents involving dogs. The officer says that he or she was “afraid for their life” and seem to expect that their belief makes everything that happens allowable. Their belief tells them that facing a dog is the same as facing a human with a gun. They see, they claim, no option other than deadly force. They believe that they “don’t have time” or they don’t believe that the tools available will work.  They fail to accurately assess options.

But belief is often unqualified, supported by feelings rather than facts. Objectively, an officer’s belief in the availability of options, or lack thereof, and in the efficacy of other tools, may be as flawed as any other belief. Unqualified belief can conflict badly with both facts and the realities of the law. One fact, for instance, is that no officer has been killed in the line of duty by dog attack since 1936. That fatality, and the four others documented in US history before that, were due to infection or rabies, not mauling injuries.

Under the law, belief has to be reasonable, based on the training and experience of the person acting. Assessment of a situation needs to be grounded in facts, in competent training, in the understanding of what options really exist, and an understanding of how to readily put those options into action. Yet officers equate the level of threat presented by dogs to that of guns, which kill hundreds of officers yearly. Belief equates two very different risk situations. The belief that these threats are equal is not based on fact.

Reasonability, under the law, is based on what a "well trained" officer is expected to know and do. When it comes to animal issues, Police Departments are falling down in this training. Yes, a few states now mandate canine encounter training. I was part of developing and implementing the program now set by the California Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission. Chicago Humane built a similar program a few years ago. Colorado has a training program.

Through the National Sheriffs' Association and the National Coalition on Violence Against Animals, a team I am proud to be part of is trying to develop a nationwide training curriculum based on solid behavioral science and providing officers knowledge and tools to increase their safety, and the safety of pets.

More widely, however, existing training is mostly somewhere between inadequate and embarrassing. Officers are not being given the tools that they need to move from ungrounded belief to solid assessment of options.

Establishing solid training is the first step in reducing these incidents and improving the ability of officers to respond reasonably. Training needs to be widespread and frequent. Lessons need to be taught and integrated into policy, and repeated until they become part of the fabric of an officer’s regular thought process.

Another part of integrating necessary change comes from the top. Administrations of Departments must recognize that policy must not only be present, but respected. Departments must show a willingness to enforce policy evenly, fairly, and most of all consistently. A department that has a policy that is regularly ignored without consequence effectively has no policy at all.

Lastly, Departments must recognize that there is a potential for error, and that it is essential to acknowledge error when it occurs. In Law Enforcement, we don’t like that, because for such a long time we have been caught up in another belief: the belief that we are always right.

We need to work harder to achieve change, from inside and out. We need to change our practices, and our beliefs. We need to recognize that our actions have to be moderated by control and recognition of mission versus responsibility. We need to accept that we may be wrong, and correct those things that are wrong. We need to accept change in practice and belief so that an encounter with a pet doesn't become, as a song says, another sacrifice on the altar of "always right".

Friday, March 10, 2017

Fear vs Targeted Aggression: Can we tell the difference?

It has been said that we, humans, are born as fear based creatures craving attention. I believe that the same idea applies to dogs.

Dealing with fearful dogs is a pretty regular task for me in my work. I spent time with 54 dogs seized from a hoarder that had never seen sun, or felt grass below their feet. I work with bite dogs that have responded to a sudden frightening experience by using the only tools they have: their teeth. Some of my clients are dogs that are overwhelmed by life with humans and need to learn trust.

                                          Frightened dog dumped by morons...

For both species, fear is a survival strategy. If a dog sees something it fears, the smart (long term for survival) is to avoid that scary thing. Given room, the smartest thing is to run away. Conflict with an unknown entity or situation is not necessarily productive when you are trying to survive long enough to continue your species.

A dog’s fear doesn’t have to be “justified” in human terms. Fear is a response to a perceived threat, and that threat may be real - or not.  Perception of threat by a dog to a particular, or general, situation can be a presence (a ‘plus’ situation), or an absence (a ‘minus’), of something. For instance, the minus may be lack of socialization or a nurturing environment, or a plus reaction may be a reaction to a prior, direct experience.

Abuse is one of those direct experiences that can set a dog up for fear. As Ryoko Tomomori, author of “Mignon’s Tomomori-san in the Animal World.” writes: “There was one skittish dog who would flee in desperation when anyone put out their hand. It seems he’s been badly beaten. I wanted him to understand that the human hand isn’t a weapon, it’s a good thing. He was getting old, and I wanted him to regain trust in humans while living out his remaining years.”

Blaming negative behavior on fear or “abuse” is, sometimes, an easy out that allows owners to avoid responsibility for their dogs’ actions. Claiming a dog is showing fear based aggressive behavior quickly moves us to “oh, you poor thing” and away from accepting responsibility for our own actions, or lack thereof.

But fear is not the only reason that dogs show negative behavior. We have cases wherein a dog acts out, deliberately engaging a target (canine or human), and yet there are those who try to excuse the behavior as being fear motivated. Fear is real, but so is bad behavior when it is really an honestly aggressive dog showing offensive (in the sports sense) behavior that has never been adequately addressed by their owner.

Let’s look at an example. A particular dog can, at times, walk past other animals if they are ignoring him/her. The owner notes that the client dog reacts strongly to other dogs if those dogs bark, or even focus, on the client. Assumptions are made that our client is “fearful”, and is responding to other dogs because they are afraid and simply “defending” themselves.

But our client is walking along a street and another dog barks from the safety of its own yard. Our client lunges hard enough to break loose from the person walking the dog and closes the gap to the other dog, and fully engaging the target dog. A fight of course breaks out and someone gets bitten.

But did a fight break out? Is this canine social aggression? Is this a fear based defensive behavior?

A fight, or what we look at as social aggression, is defined by Ádám Miklósi as “…ritualized behavioural units which evolved for signaling the inner state and physical potential of the contester, and does not aim at causing damage in the other.” (Miklósi, 2007). In this case, contact was not a social dispute: the initially barking dog was secure in its own yard. The attacking dog was at a distance, initially managed by its owner.

Is this fear based behavior? Let’s look at both dogs. The dog in its yard was accompanied by an owner, and was restrained by a tether. When that dog saw a strange dog approaching, it may have responded from fear. A fearful dog may show threatening behaviors to secure space from a frightening stimulus. According to Dr. Suzanne Hetts, “Threatening behaviors (are) designed to intimidate, repel, or warn another individual to stay away. These behaviors are not meant to result in harm.” (Hetts, 1999). Further, Dr. Hetts says about threatening behaviors “Their goal is to warn other individuals to stop what they are doing.” Thus threatening behaviors, such as barking or growling, are intended to communicate a dog’s desire to stay separate, to avoid contact.

Territoriality can also cause threatening behaviors. After all, the whole idea of territoriality is to “…repel, or warn another individual to stay away.” Protection of territory or resources is rational and expected. Territorial behavior can also be based on fear of the other animal, trying to put up a big front to keep the other dog away. Barking by the tethered dog, then, makes sense.

The dog that targeted and deliberately closed with the tethered dog? That is much more of a problem.

A dog that responds to the sight or sound of another dog is typically termed “reactive”. That is, the dog gives an unreasonable response to a normal behavior or situation. Desensitization is usually the first avenue of attack in fixing this behavior.

Desensitization does not always work. Some dogs have to be managed, despite training, to ensure that they do not get into trouble. This can involve physical management, including making sure the animal is restrained by a healthy and able handler if out, and perhaps through the use of a muzzle for safety, both of the dog and of others.

Owners that fail to recognize the consequences of managing a dog with problems face other, bigger problems. Liability for their dog attacking another animal or person is the least. I have seen a case where one owner’s dogs were extremely reactive towards a neighbor’s dog. This owner was warned not to move both of their dogs past the neighbor’s property at the same time since they were a small person trying to manage two large, muscular dogs. One morning this owner got in a hurry and disregarded the management need. We will never know what happened exactly, but the opposing dogs connected and the owner died a horrible death.

Back to the case at hand: the outcome of the incident was injury to dog and human. The dog that targeted, lunged towards, closed the gap to directly engage the other, tethered dog was not afraid. That dog was on the offense, more like a guided missile (or muscle) than a shrinking violet trying to escape a scary thing. Defensive fear and offensive targeting are two very different things.  Owners and trainers must recognize that reactivity and fear may be related, but offensive targeting is a serious problem that must be aggressively managed before, during, and even well after behavioral modification work.