ongoing investigation
Cops + Dogs
What happens when dogs become instruments of police power?
It’s time to examine how dogs are used within policing, what that means for the communities they encounter, and why police in the USA shoot up to 250 pet dogs every single day.
The funding link opens Patreon. The main investigation will remain free to access.
Content note: This project discusses police violence, dog attacks, racism, incarceration, and harm to people and animals. Some linked material may be distressing. Please choose when and how you continue.
The premise
The heroic image is not the whole story.
Police dogs are often presented as uncomplicated heroes. Our latest series, Cops + Dogs, asks us to look past that familiar image and examine the system around it.
Who is harmed when a dog is used to make a person comply? Why do police shoot and kill hundreds of our pets every day in the US? How did these practices become normal, and what could public safety look like without attack dogs and armed police?
This is a sustained, abolitionist investigation into the intersection between policing and dogs. We are bringing reporting, history, training, welfare, and public accountability into one place.
Nobody knows the true number.
A commonly cited estimate is roughly 10,000 dogs shot by police each year, about 25 to 30 every day. But, agencies do not reliably track or report these shootings, and a UNH Law Review analysis notes that the real total may be substantially higher and could reach six figures.
Three connected lines of investigation
One system. Many consequences.
01
Power, policy + history
How did attack dogs become part of police and carceral practice? We are examining the history, policies, and public stories that made this use of dogs seem normal.
02
People + communities
Who encounters these dogs, what happens afterward, and whose experiences are missing from the “heroic” version of that story?
03
The dogs themselves
What do training, deployment, and retirement demand of dogs asked to threaten, pursue, bite, and control people?
Start here
Watch thIS video TO LEARN MORE ABOUT WEAPONIZED DOGS. Then explore the evidence and case records.
Begin with this video. Then read the Weaponized Dogs page for the full historical, legal, welfare, and abolitionist argument behind this project, or follow individual cases with the Incident Index.
how you can help
Help us CONTINUE thIS investigation
Direct viewer funding gives us the time and capacity to continue with this work.
Patreon is currently focused on this police-dog advocacy project. We will say clearly if that scope changes.
Cops + Dogs is one doorway into The Bigger Picture.
This site is a place to get practical dog training help. It is also a place to follow the evidence and ask what our relationships with dogs reveal about care, coercion, punishment, public safety, and power.
The Bigger Picture connects this investigation with the site’s wider work on ethics, research, intersectionality, advocacy, and accountability.