This local incident made me aware of a potential problem with K-9’s. They’re trained to attack people with weapons.
How do officers, holding weapons, at a scene avoid becoming the K-9’s target?
There’s a internal affairs investigation into this friendly fire incident. I’d guess the dog should have been on a leash. Btw, it survived the shooting.
Police K9s are about 1/9th as trained and capable as you assume them to be. I’m sure some of them are really great, but a lot of them are trained to be aggressive and respond to handler cues for drugs.
You can apply that last sentence to cops, for that matter.
That particular K-9 didn’t respond to his handler’s commands. I’m sure that is a concern for the Jonesboro police department.
Do all the officers on scene pull back before the K-9 is unleashed?
It’s hard to understand how the K-9 gets sent after the right target.
There are a ton of kennels/“trainers” that claim to produce police working dogs, and train their handlers.
Agencies that can afford to work with the good kennels/trainers/handler training CAN get what you expect from a police dog and handler. This is in no way guaranteed, though.
Buttfuck PD, who can’t afford to computerize their ticketing system but somehow found money for a dog, needless to say, probably isn’t spending as much as they should to get an appropriate dog, or to pay for the handler to work with the dog for weeks of training together.
So, what you end up with is cops who think they’re hot shit because they have a dog, and dogs who aren’t worth a crap except to attack people or to be able to say that it ‘alerted’ on a vehicle.
I once interviewed a US Army military dog handler who served in Iraq with his dog.
Apparently the dogs are highly trained enough to follow the handlers commands exactly so there was never any incidents of the dog attacking fellow soldiers while the handler was around.
However there was one incident where the dogs handler was knocked out by the concussion blast from a nearby rocket attack and without being able to get commands the dog proceeded on its own to attack the nearest visible threat who happened to be another American soldier firing back during the attack. Dog had to be restrained until the handler got back on his feet.
My husband handled canines for a few years while working for East BF PD.
He enjoyed the work enough that he paid for his own dogs. The dog was his, and he was the dog’s person, and that makes a huge difference in how any dog behaves. A half-trained dog on his second half-trained handler is a liability.
A good boi and his person can be a great asset, if and only if both know their jobs. And no good police K9 should be trained to be aggressive. Confident yes. Mean no.
Our dogs were just schmoopy family members when off duty. I mean, a stranger would have been ill-advised to try to mess with the family, but the children could safely play with the dogs.
A confident dog doesn’t have to be aggressive.
There’s a scene in the book Free for All where the library is giving a free presentation for children about the police, and the officer brings his K9 partner, hides an envelope with marijuana on a shelf and tells the dog to “find the drugs.” Whereupon the dog goes to the purse of a young woman in the library!
Good doggie!
ETA: The librarian went over to the woman and suggested she leave, and take her purse with her.
Well, at least shooting dogs is something that police on some forcesare actually really good at.
LOL! that IS a good doggie! 
In a memorable “Cops” episode, a police officer is in his squad car tailing a suspect, and his K-9 partner is in the front seat next to him. The “Cops” cameraman who’s riding in the back leans forward to get a better shot of the action, whereupon the K-9 (an imposing German Shepherd) turns his head and gives the cameraman a “what the FUCK are you doing in my space?” look.
The cameraman immediately leans back to his original position, and everything is cool. 
Someday we may have similar issues with armed robotic companions. The dog can only be trained so much and clearly in the described scenarios, the person being attacked meets all the right heuristics for a target. These aren’t really malfunctions, just limits on what you can expect a dog to be able to see or perceive.
As several Dopers have posted, the trainer’s relationship with the dog is paramount. And what the dog is trained to do also factors in. (I have not heard of dogs trained to run toward gunfire. IMHO that is unnecessary and dangerous; and begs the question of the dog being at the shooting range in the first place.)
News stories are notoriously incomplete and we only have the reporter’s statement as to what that dog was trained to do and where the handler was, etc.
As other Dopers have pointed out, there are many variables including the handler’s relationship with the dog, the skill of the handler, how disciplined/experienced/intelligent/excitable the dog is, the situation at hand, etc. There are different breeds, different temperaments, and different training approaches.
In the end, they’re dogs placed in unusual situations and they’re not infallible. I’ve been “nipped” by a K9 who appeared jealous that his handler and I were talking in a parking lot when the dog wanted attention. I’ve also stepped back into, or on, K9’s in tactical situations and not been bitten.
Hope that helps,
AZRob
I appreciate everyone’s contributions to this question.
I understand working with k-9’s varies a lot depending on the quality of training.
This is incorrect in two ways (three if you include your last irrelevant comment.)
The headline, as metaphor is absolutely correct. “Friendly fire” is not “typical” for policeman, soldiers, or trained aggressive K9 dogs accompanying policeman on a dangerous mission where a take-down is anticipated.
Police K9 dogs (and their handlers) are as trained as rigorously as can be up to standards beyond what we even know, certainly enough where officers rely on them as an auxiliary weapon, so to speak.
Most people associate police K9 with two types: 1) those trained apprehension and protection dogs (their range of independent actions when a perp has been apprehended and and being walked to the car is also quite wide) and 2) dogs with police, or agencies such as Secret Service, customs, drug enforcement, etc. for sweeps of explosives or contraband material.
In general, as a “personnel item” for police and budgeting, the grouping is fine.
However, OP thinking is another story, even on his premise of the dog types.
NO customs dog has the slightest clue in a typical crime scene where takedowns and directed, pre-trained unleashed aggression is his billet. They would be unleashed and run and hide or give the bad guy a lick, no matter how hard his handler/cop tried to sic’em on the bad guy.
ETA: The converse is not true, however. Many K9 dogs who are assigned to police work directly involved in dangerous situations are also trained for odor recognition. I’m familiar with some of the work of the NYPD and NYC transit police where the same dogs can also do duty to smell out, specifically, corpses and blood in general.
Correction and apology to OP:
OP did not bring up “other” odor-recognition dogs, nor of course, was his post cynical.
Some years ago a police dog handler told me about an exercise where, against his advice, they put the dog into the building first and then all piled in after it, whereupon it bit them.
“People think that because it’s a ‘trained police dog’ that it’s some sort of four-footed furry genius. But it’s only a dog, with a very limited understanding.”
I’ve always seen in tv shows and real life people say not to touch or try to play with seeing eyes dogs and such because they are highly trained or something and it could potentially mess with their training(?). I never knew if that was really true or not.
I didn’t even know till recently when talking to a woman married to a cop that a K-9 Unit (dog) lives with the cop so I’m sure that in theory they should develop quite a close bond. I’m assuming that they engage in regular play or recreation with the dog since it’s with them almost all the time.
Do the cops that handle these dogs have to continually reinforce the dog’s training when at home with them, do they have have to draw a line somewhere if the dog gets out of hand and repeatedly reinforce the dog’s training and not get too close so to speak? Or do they generally let the dog relax and just be a normal dog when not at work?
Sadly, this is all true in many cases.
When we trained guide dogs, people would often come up to us to ask to pet them. We usually let them, because it was good training.
I don’t think someone petting a working dog is going to ruin its training, but it is still a bad idea. The dog knows the difference from working (having the jacket on for pups) and playing. Random petting may confuse the dog, and disorient it. Not to mention the blind person is going about his or her business, and is not a walking petting zoo.
It’s usually not a problem when the dog is a German Shepherd. Not because they are mean - the one my daughter is training now is a sweetie - but because they can be intimidating.
When my kids were really little, one to three, we lived near a park where an obedience school would train dogs. They would refuse to let kids pet the dogs for the same reason. It would disrupt the training session.