Is It Ethical for Police to Have a Dog in the Fight?

Last summer, 500 dogs were rescued from a multi-state dog fighting ring in the biggest fight bust in U.S. history. As part of the investigation leading up to the bust, police infiltrated the operation by throwing undercover dogs into the ring.

Although I'm eternally grateful for their service and sacrifice — our pit bull Karma was rescued in that operation — I'm also distinctly uncomfortable with law enforcement officers fighting dogs. Would you put children at risk in a child-pornography sting? In prostitution stings, do cops have sex with johns? I think not.

But even if you accept the argument that the dogs were necessary for the police to infiltrate the operation, other aspects of the bust are troubling. Some of the dogs were with the police officers for almost 18 months, and, according to numerous sources involved, they weren't in the best of shape.

The dogs were trained and transported to fights by law enforcement officers. Terry Mills was one of the Missouri State Highway Patrol investigators involved in the sting. "We would have never been invited — never gotten anywhere close to them," Mills said in an article in the Riverfront Times, the St. Louis alt-weekly. "Especially after Michael Vick, they went from being, 'Let's have everybody over and have a good time,' to 'If you don't have a dog in the fight, you don't have any business here.'" So it does appear that some dogs were needed to gain access to the underworld sport of dog fighting.

According to Tim Rickey, who headed up the Humane Society of Missouri's animal cruelty task force at the time, "Frankly, we didn't know how the public would respond. We just jumped into it. For me, it was about doing the right thing." I agree that it's about doing the right thing. But you don't want to just get the bad guys. You also want to do right by the dogs — investigation dogs included.

The operation was not taken lightly. U.S. Attorney Richard Callahan says his office decided what the dogs could be subjected to based on "thoughtful discussions with both the state and national humane societies, those individuals involved and with the undercover agents." Callahan declined to specify what training methods were off-limits.

The investigation started in January 2008 and ended on July 9, 2009. Independence day for most of the dogs but not for those who helped enable the bust.

The organization Bad Rap has taken in numerous investigation dogs in the past, including many from this bust. Tragically, in all of those cases, the majority of the investigation dogs had to be euthanized after compassion care because of their poor condition. You would hope these dogs would be in better shape, their condition reflected by the time they spent with the police, not the fighters.

Donna Reynolds rightly feels that the investigation dogs should be treated as heroes. "These dogs are the sacrificial lambs of the anti-dogfighting campaigns. We wish we could say that they receive the same standards of care (veterinary care, proper housing, enrichment and evaluation, rescue opportunities) that the dogs confiscated in raids are due under new ethical guidelines, but sadly that's not the case," says Reynolds. "While technically these dogs are heroes for helping to save hundreds of other canine victims from cruelty, many receive substandard care and die without anyone knowing that they ever existed. We owe them so much more than that."

Our dog Karma owes her life to the investigation dogs and the law enforcement officers who made the case that led to her rescue. She is blissfully unaware of their sacrifice and sleeps comfortably and untroubled amid our other dogs and cats each night — a luxury that the majority of the investigation dogs were never afforded.

We as a society need to step up and make sure that the investigation dogs get the same humane treatment, evaluation, and chance for a loving home as the other victims of cruelty do. They are undercover law enforcement officers, too, and deserve not only accolades but the reward of a better life for their sacrifice.

Photo credit: Andre Hermann