K-9s at Hetzel Field

For many black people, the animalization of police power is emblematic of the continuation of organized, sanctioned white violence against the black community.  In the United States, the use of dogs as an aid to the police has been commonplace for the past two centuries starting with tracking of and then attacking runaway slaves. Plantation owners and those in power who supported the practice of slavery saw little difference between fighting an enemy in a military situation and fighting an enemy of their economy; the runaway slave. Both are battles for the existence of their brand of civilization and, in their minds, the police represent the thin wall of protection between civil people, i.e., whites, and those who are savage and bestial, i.e. blacks.

However, over the past sixty years, the image of police dogs has become predominantly one of protection. For non-targeted people, generally white, police dogs are viewed as critical in the work of the police with superior olfactory powers ideal for locating drugs and bombs although there is scant and questionable data behind the efficacy of those tasks. This evolved image frames the notion that dogs protect the public, specifically, white property and white rights resulting in a propaganda of protection that falls in line with what law enforcement wants us to think just as newspaper readers in Trenton in 1965 believed the white boys did nothing and viewers of certain cable shows were comforted by the videos of snarling dogs surrounding black residents in Ferguson in 2014. This notion of protection submerges the reality of dogs as a dehumanizing and murderous weapon against blacks in America and dismantles the history of dogs as weapons of war and terror to protect the protection story.  And newspapers of record and cable news shows participate in the propagation of the idea of protection as a cover for the reality of racist animus.