Felons using mean Dogs as Police Deterrents

While there are police dogs that help catch criminals, there are also bad guys who train their own dogs to attack upon encounter, especially when it’s a police encounter.  That’s what happened in southeast Tennessee when police tried to arrest two suspected drug dealers.  Instead of making their way into the property they said hello to a large, snarling dog on the front porch.   As the officers persuaded the homeowner to come out and chain the animal, the main suspect and her partner flushed away the drugs.

“These dogs are the gang-member version of buying a home-security system…protecting dealers from predatory human rivals as well as arrest,” Carter F. Smith, a gang expert and professor of criminal justice at Middle Tennessee University, told the New York Times.   

In Tennessee it’s such a problem that legislators support a new measure aimed at prohibiting the use of mean dogs by criminals.

Again, as the New York Times reports, a bill awaiting Governor Phil Bredesen’s signature would bar felons convicted of violent or drug-related crimes from keeping “potentially vicious” dogs for 10 years after being released from prison or probation.  Based on studies showing that unsterilized dogs are most apt to be aggressive, it would also require that any dog owned by felons be spayed or neutered and implanted with a microchip for identification.