Legislation Inspired by the Tragic Strangling of Police Dog Bane
Kansas is poised to increase penalties for killing police dogs and horses after legislators gave their final approval to a measure inspired by a suspect’s strangling of a dog last year in the state’s largest city.
The New Legislation
The Republican-controlled state House approved a bill with a 115-6 vote that would allow a first-time offender to be sentenced to more than three years in prison for killing a police animal, an arson dog, a game warden’s dog, or a search-and-rescue dog. The penalty could be up to five years if the killing occurs when a suspect is trying to elude law enforcement. An offender also could be fined up to $10,000. The current penalty for killing a police dog is up to a year behind bars and a fine of between $500 and $5,000, and the law doesn’t specifically cover horses.
“There is a lot of time and money put into those animals,” said House Speaker Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican who was the bill’s leading advocate. “They have to continually train all the time and so to have one killed, there’s got to be a pretty harsh penalty.”
Bipartisan Support and National Trends
Increased penalties for harming police dogs have gained bipartisan support across the U.S. In Colorado, the Democratically led General Assembly approved a similar measure last month. Proposals have also advanced in GOP-controlled Legislatures in Missouri and West Virginia and have been introduced in at least four other states.
Inspiration from Tragic Incident
The Kansas measure was inspired by the November death of Bane, an 8-year-old Wichita police dog. Authorities say a suspect in a domestic violence case took refuge in a storm drain and strangled Bane when a deputy sent the dog in to flush out the suspect.
But critics of such measures have questions about how dogs are used in policing, particularly when suspects of color are involved. Their use also has a fraught history, such as their deployment during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
“Police dogs have jaws strong enough to puncture sheet metal. Victims of attacks by police dogs have sustained serious and even fatal injuries,” Keisha James, a staff attorney for the National Lawyers Guild’s National Police Accountability Project, said in written testimony to a Senate committee last month. “It follows that an individual being attacked by a police dog would respond by trying to defend themselves.”
