Ruff Justice: California Lawmakers Want To Ban Police Dogs, Citing Racism

A new bill that prohibits the use of police dogs for apprehension, crowd control, and arrests has been approved by the public safety committee of the California Assembly due to legislators claiming that the practice exhibits “racial bias and violence against black Americans and people of color,” as reported by Fox News on Tuesday.

The Assembly Bill 742, which was introduced by Democratic assemblyman Corey Jackson, prohibits the utilization of police dogs for arrests, apprehensions, and crowd control, which Jackson referred to as “a deeply racialized and harmful practice.”

The bill accuses K-9 units of being a part of “this country’s dehumanizing, cruel, and violent abuse of black Americans,” specifically alleging that the dogs were “first used by slave catchers.”

Nevertheless, according to a study on the history of police K-9 corps, the use of dogs in police work only spread to the United States in the early 20th century. In other parts of the world, the use of dogs for policing dates back as far as 1,000 B.C.

Furthermore, Assembly Bill 742 criticizes the police’s attempts to suppress Black Lives Matter protests.

The bill was co-sponsored by the California chapter of the ACLU, with the chapter’s executive director pointing to “bite victims, especially [in] communities of color.”

The bill, however, does not prohibit the utilization of police dogs for narcotics searches, explosives detection, and search and rescue.

According to Fox, if the bill becomes law, California will be the first state to adopt such a restriction on police dog use.